The Cambridge Manuals of Science and 
Literature 



THE EVOLUTION OF 
NEW JAPAN 



CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

ilontJan: FETTER LANE, E.G. 

C. F. GLAY, Manager 




<Fl3in6ursi) : 
Berlin : 



loo, PRINCES STREET 
A. ASHER AND CO. 
ILcipjtst F. A. BROCKHAUS 
i^etolorfe: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
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Ail rights reserved 




The Emperor Mutsu Hito 






PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 



With the exception of the coat of anns at 
the foot, the design on the title page is a 
reproduction of one used by the earliest kno^n 
Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521 



PREFACE 

rpmS little book has at least one original feature. 
It is, to the best of the author's knowledge, the 
first book on Japan which has ever been issued at 
the price of one shilling. Surely, this will commend 
it to readers and bookbuyers, even if it exposes no 
more than the skeleton of the modern history of 
a people who are both our allies and our good 
customers (as well as our rivals) in trade, and who 
can now give us valuable lessons of patriotic courage, 
sacrifice, and perseverance in return for all we have 
taught them. 

J. H. L. 

August^ 1913. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. ' PAGE 

Introduction . 1 

I. Historical Sketch 3 

II. Restoration of the Emperor . . . . 16 

III. Reforms in Foreign and Domestic Policy . . 28 

IV. Social Reforms ....... 41 

V. Development of Constitutional Government . 54 
YI. Recovery of National Autonomy . . . . 71 
VII. Trade and Industry 84 

VIIL Foreign Relations. 1867—1895 .... 100 

IX. Foreign Relations. 1895—1913 .... 120 

X. The Emperor Meiji 142 

Notes 157 

Postscript. Books on Japan . . . . 159 

Index . . 161 



ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP 

The Emperor Mutsu Hito <1867— 1912) . . Frontispiece 

Facing page 
The Emperor Komei (1847—1867) 14 

The Emperor Yoshi Hito — now on the throne . . 22 

Sign Manual and Seal of the Emperor Mutsu Hito . 30 

With Countersign and Seal of Count Okuma, Minister 
for Foreign Affairs, given at the palace at Kioto, April 24, 
1897 (copied from one of the author's exequaturs). 

Prince Ito 60 

Assassinated at Harbing, October 26, 1909. 

Sir Harry S. Parkes, K.C.B., G.C.M.G 80 

British Minister to Japan 1865 — 1882 (died at Peking 
1885). 

The five Choshiu Students in England, 1864. . . 116 
Four of the five students subsequently became Prince 
Ito, Marquis Inouye, Viscount Inouye (not related to 
Marquis Inouye) and Viscount Yamao, and all five held 
high administrative offices in the Government. The 
present Ambassador to the Court of St James is the only 
son of Marquis Inouye. 

Marquis Inouye 132 

Map of the Japanese Empire at end 

The author is indebted to the courtesy of His Excellency the 
Japanese Ambassador for the illustrations of the Emperor Komei 
and of Marquis Inouye. 



K 



INTRODUCTION 

In the 7th century of the Christian era, Japan, 
as one incident in the general assimilation of Chinese 
civilisation which then took place, adopted the Chinese 
calendar, in which years are counted in chronological 
periods of irregular length, distinguished from each 
other by specific names — nengo or year names. In 
1872, subsequent to the abandonment of the Chinese 
in favour of the European system as the foundation 
of the national civilisation, the old calendar was 
replaced by the Gregorian, though not in its entirety. 
A formal recognition of the Christian era would have 
been inconsistent with the reverence that was due to 
the Emperor as the acknowledged descendant of the 
Gods of Heaven, and to the national religion of which 
he was the head, and it was therefore decided that 
while days and months should henceforth be reckoned 
on the Western model, the old system of year-count- 
ing by nengo should be retained. Under it a name, 
usually one of good omen, such as " Great Honour," 
"Heavenly Virtue," "Tranquil Peace," "Great Pros- 
perity," was chosen at the beginning of each period 

L. 1 



2 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN 

and the successive years were described as the first, 
second, etc. years of that period until the time came 
when it was arbitrarily terminated and a new one 
adopted. There was not even a remote approximation 
to uniformity in the length of the periods. Many 
only continued for one year, while three exceeded 20 
and one 30 years. 

In the year following the accession of the late 
Emperor the occurrence of his birthday was signalised 
by the inauguration of a new period to which the 
name of Meiji — Enlightened Government — was given. 
It was, at the same time, decreed that in future there 
should be only one chronological period in each 
reign and that it should coincide with the length of 
the reign, with the exception that, as a new period 
has, through all ages, always been reckoned from the 
first day of the year of its adoption, each should in 
future begin on the 1st of January preceding the 
sovereign's accession and close on the 31st of 
December preceding his death. The period of Meiji 
— the longest in history — dates from January 25th, 
1868, that being New Year's Day under the old 
(Chinese) calendar, till December 31st, 1911, and 
is almost synchronous with the late Emperor's 
reign. In this volume we propose to tell the story 
of the evolution of Japan from an unknown and 
impotent Asiatic state into one of the acknowledged 
Powers of the world, which took place during the 



CH. I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 3 

period of Meiji, in the reign of the Emperor Mutsu 
Hito. It is the story of one of the most eventful 
reigns of any period or of any nation in the world's 
history, a story which is full of the most pregnant 
lessons of what can be achieved by an intelligent 
and courageous people, working with whole-hearted 
patriotism, under the leadership of a liberal and 
enlightened sovereign. 



CHAPTER I 

HISTORICAL SKETCH 

Before proceeding with our main task it is 
necessary that a short sketch of the history and 
polity of Japan should be given in order that our 
readers may be enabled to have a clear understanding 
of the social and political conditions of the Empire 
at the beginning of Meiji. The first Emperor was 
Jimmu Tenno, who founded the Empire and ascended 
the throne in the year 660 B.C., little more than 
a century later than the founding of Rome. From 
him, all the subsequent occupants of the throne 
traced their descent in an unbroken line, and as 
Jimmu was the direct descendant, in the fifth genera- 
tion, of the Sun Goddess (Tensho Daijin), who herself 
sprang from the creators of Heaven and Earth, all 

1—2 



4 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [oh. 

his successors have claimed through him a divine 
descent, a claim which has been accepted with un- 
questioning faith by their subjects in all times, which 
the most extreme spirit of modern materialism has 
not yet affected, and which is as devoutly acknow- 
ledged to this day by the most advanced student of 
Huxley or Schopenhauer as it was by any of the 
sages of old. 

Jimmu's successors, throughout twelve centuries, 
were all sovereigns in reality as well as in name, all 
taking an active and vigorous share in their govern- 
ment, but from the seventh century of the Christian 
era they permitted the executive power to fall into 
the hands of the leading family among their courtiers, 
the Fujiwara, who, like the Emperors themselves, 
claimed divine origin, their remote ancestor having 
descended from Heaven in the train of Jimmu's 
progenitor, the Sun Goddess's grandson ; they also, 
like the Emperors, survive to this day. For four 
hundred years the Fujiwara conserved to themselves 
all the executive authority of the realm until it was 
wrested from them by the leaders of a race of soldiers, 
who, while the later generations of the Fujiwara 
were, in the ease and luxury of the Court at Kioto, 
sinking into the condition of idle and incapable 
voluptuaries, had been hardened by continuous 
military service against the Ainu, the savage autoch- 
thons of Japan, in those days still numerous and 



I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 5 

powerful on the northern frontiers of the lands that 
had been colonised by the followers of Jimmu and 
their descendants. The greatest of these leaders was 
Yoritomo, who succeeded at the close of the twelfth 
century in making himself dictator of the Empire, 
under the title of Sei-i-tai-Shogun or "Barbarian- 
repressing-great-General," which was conferred on 
him by the Emperor. The title, abbreviated in 
common use into Shogun, was one which had pre- 
viously been frequently conferred on generals in 
command of armies in the field, but it signified only 
military authority and it lapsed with the termination 
of the special command for which it was given. 
Yoritomo gave it a new significance. He assumed 
not only the military but the civil power and retained 
the title for life. He established his residence at 
Kamakura, a town about 30 miles from Tokio, which 
quickly grew into a large and populous city and 
became the real capital of the Empire while Kioto, 
the home of the legitimate Emperors, was only so in 
name. There he administered, as the de facto sove- 
reign, the government of the Empire while the 
provinces were held and governed by his relatives 
and adherents, soldiers who had fought by his side 
and who owed all their fealty to him alone. 

This was the beginning of the systems of dual 
government and of feudalism in Japan which lasted 
from the time of Yoritomo (1192 — 1199) until the 



6 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [oh. 

accession of the late Emperor. At Kioto there was 
always the Emperor, the legitimate sovereign, the 
acknowledged source of all authority and the sole 
fountain of honour, surrounded by a small retinue of 
courtiers, who were known as Kuge, many of whom 
sprang from the Imperial family, and all of whom 
claimed an origin and descent that were only less 
illustrious than those of the Emperor. Both Em- 
perors and court were entirely dependent on the 
Shoguns for their means of support, which were for 
many long centuries provided with such parsimony, 
that all were practically sunk in abject poverty. On 
the other side, the Shogun's courts, first at Kamakura 
and afterwards at Yedo, with an interval between 
the two at Kioto, in the very shadow of the Emperor's 
own palace, were maintained in the utmost Imperial 
splendour ; the national executive was entirely in 
the hands of the Shoguns and their ministers, and 
all the land in the provinces was parcelled among 
feudal lords — the daimio — the majority of whom 
sprang from soldiers of fortune who were rewarded 
by successive dynasties of th« Shoguns with the 
grants of large estates, the spoils of almost unceasing 
civil war. 

Yoritomo's own direct descendants did not long 
hold the great office which their progenitor had won. 
It fell in turn to other military adventurers during 
the succeeding four centuries, the last and the greatest 



I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 7 

of whom was Tokugawa lyeyasu who became Shogmi 
at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The 
system, inaugurated by Yoritomo, was brought to its 
highest perfection by lyeyasu, who, in the measures 
he took to secure the retention of the Shogunate in 
his own family and the peace of the reahn, showed 
that he was a constructive statesman of the highest 
order of genius, and he was ably followed by some of 
his earliest successors. So successful were he and 
they, that throughout 260 years, during which his 
descendants occupied the throne of the Shoguns at 
Yedo, their authority was never once questioned and 
the country under their government, which, for five 
centuries prior to the accession of lyeyasu, had been 
almost continuously desolated by civil war, fought 
with no less bitterness and savage cruelty than those 
which characterised the wars of Europe in the same 
periods, enjoyed jDrofound and unbroken peace, and 
its people, according to the descriptions of European 
writers, who saw and studied them, should have been 
one of the happiest in the world. 

To this picture there was another side. During 
the last half of the sixteenth and the first quarter of 
the seventeenth centuries Japan fi-eely admitted to 
her harbours European ships, which found their way 
to the Far East, and Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch 
and English traders were in turn welcomed by her. 
Jesuit and other missionaries of the Roman Catholic 



8 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

Church followed the first Portuguese and Spanish 
traders and their proselytising efforts, carried on 
with equal zeal and ability, met with such success 
that, within one century from the landing of the first 
missionary, there were said to have been over a million 
native converts to Christianity of all classes of the 
people. Unfortunately the zeal of the missionaries 
outran their discretion and gave rise to the suspicion 
that proselytism was merely an antecedent step to 
territorial aggression threatening the political inde- 
pendence of the Empire, and as the suspicion grew 
to certainty, the whole attitude of the Government 
changed both to Christianity and to Europeans. 
Christianity was extirpated by persecution as ruthless 
as that of Nero. Missionaries were put to death or 
expelled. Traders too were expelled, an exception 
being made only in favour of the Dutch, a small colony 
of whom were permitted to remain under the most 
humiliating conditions, closely interned in the little 
island of Desima in the harbour of Nagasaki, where 
they carried on a trade which, though hampered by 
vexatious restrictions, brought them enormous profits. 
All other Europeans were forbidden to approach the 
shores of Japan or to land on pain of death. And 
not only were Europeans forbidden to land in Japan, 
but Japanese were, under equally severe penalties, 
forbidden to go abroad. None who did so was 
permitted to return. Throughout the middle ages 



I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 9 

the Japanese had shown themselves bold and ad- 
venturous seamen, making their way both as pirates 
and traders not only to China and Siam, but in some 
instances across the Pacific to Mexico. Now they 
were forbidden by their own authorities to build any 
ship larger in burthen than 500 Koku (50 tons) and 
from the day on which the edict which forbade them 
was issued their traditional maritime spirit was gone, 
and the national seclusion, which it was the policy of 
the early Tokugawas to effect, was complete. 

For 220 years Japan was cut off from all the 
world. She had her own high degree of social and 
artistic civilisation, refined and picturesque in all its 
elements, but while Europe was advancing with giant 
strides in industrial, military and political science, 
Japan stood still and her internal state in the middle 
of the nineteenth century showed no material advance 
on what it had been in the early part of the seven- 
teenth. She was contented in herself and with her 
own acquirements and neither knew nor cared for 
aught that was happening in the outer world. 

Internally the country was crushed under one of 
the most iron systems of feudalism that the world has 
ever seen. The Shogun was the feudal superior, 
though nominally only as the mandatory of the 
Emperor. A third of the whole Empire was under 
his direct rule and the revenues were paid into his 
Treasury. The remainder was shared among 260 



10 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

feudal lords, all of whom varied in strength, wealth 
and influence in proportion to the extent of their 
domains, but all alike enjoyed complete legislative 
and executive autonomy within their own boundaries, 
an autonomy which did not even exclude the right of 
coinage. All maintained armies of hereditary soldiers 
— samurai — whose allegiance was due only to their 
own immediate feudal lords, for whose sake every 
samurai was always ready to sacrifice without a 
murmur life, liberty, name, family or property. Each 
lord, in his turn, owed allegiance to the Shogun, 
from whom he received his investiture on succession, 
whose approval he had to obtain in marriage and 
adoption, and to whom he was obliged to render 
military service when called ujion. All lived in regal 
splendour and independence in fortified castles on 
their own estates, and in no less splendour in great 
palaces in Yedo, where they were obliged to pass 
part of each year. The sole occupations of the 
samurai were those of arms, literature and the ad- 
ministration of their lords' estates and revenues, and 
both daimio and samurai combined to form the 
governing and aristocratic class and with their 
families numbered some two million souls. Beneath 
them, divided by an unfathomable social gulf, across 
which none could pass, was the subject and plebeian 
class, divided into three orders, farmers, artisans and 
traders, in number about thirty millions, whose sole 



I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 11 

lot in life was to minister to the well-being and 
luxury of their superiors. 

The general characteristics of the Japanese people 
were then such that there is scarcely a word which 
Buckle wrote in the second chapter of his History of 
Civilization on the physical and moral conditions of 
the ancient peoples of India, Egypt, Mexico or Peru, 
which mutatis mutandis might not have been applied 
to those of the people of Japan. On the part of the 
upper class there was the most autocratic use of 
despotic power ; on that of the lower the most servile 
subservience in every incident of life. Slavery, ex- 
cept perhaps in prehistoric times, never existed as 
a recognised institution in Japan, but practically 
speaking, less than sixty years ago, slavery, abject 
slavery, was the natural state of the great body of 
the people. They counted for nothing. They not 
only had no voice in the management of the public 
affairs of the state, the province, or the city, but their 
liberty, their property, and even their lives were held 
at the absolute disposal of their immediate rulers. 
Their occupations, their dress, their residences were 
all rigidly prescribed for them ; on them fell the 
entire financial burthens of the state and their sole 
functions were to labour for the comfort and luxury 
of the upper classes and to render to them an ab- 
solute and unquestioning obedience. The " habits of 
tame and servile submission were generated among 



12 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

them" and extended through successive generations 
had their invariable result in that the history of the 
world affords no more striking instance of an abjectly 
spiritless race than that of the Japanese lower classes 
only sixty years ago. They spoke in subdued tones, 
with bent backs and eyes on the ground : they would 
scarcely dare to strike a blow even in the defence of 
their own lives and families, and all the history of 
Japan does not furnish one single instance of their 
having "turned upon their rulers, of any war of 
classes, of any popular insurrection, of even one 
great popular conspiracy." 

As subjection made the lower classes abjectly 
servile so did despotic power and immunity from all 
the burthens of life render the aristocratic class 
tyrannical and cruel. The samurai of Japan have 
been quoted in England as models of everything that 
is most noble in man, as chivalrous, frugal, brave, 
courteous, loyal, patriotic, self-sacrificing. They were 
all that theoretically, and actually so in many in- 
dividual cases, but foreigners in Japan, fifty years 
ago, conceived very different ideas of them as a class. 
Sir Rutherford Alcock, our first minister to Japan, a 
keen observer, a man of the world, a careful student, 
who knew the Japan of his day, calls them " Swash- 
bucklers, swaggering blustering bullies, many cowardly 
enough to strike an enemy in the back or cut down 
an unarmed and inoffensive man, but ever ready to 



I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 13 

fling their own lives away in accomplishing a revenge 
or carrying out the behests of their chief." Even 
contemporaneous writers of their own class in Japan 
described them as ignorant, cruel, dissolute and idle. 
They treated the classes below them with the utmost 
contempt and brutality. Their patriotism and loyalty 
were local not national, were given entirely to their 
immediate feudal chiefs and not to the sovereign, and 
jealousy among rival clans would always have been a 
serious obstacle to national union, even in defence of 
the country against foreign aggression. 

Such were the conditions of the people of Japan 
in the closing years of the Tokugawa regime. They 
were all, daimio, samurai and plebeians, entirely 
segregated from their legitimate sovereign, the 
Emperor, who, living in the sacred seclusion of his 
palace at Kioto, maintained intact the divine prestige 
which had been transmitted to him from his an- 
cestors but was utterly powerless to assert himself 
in the administration of the Empire of which he was 
the nominal head. The Shogun was his Mayor of the 
Palace, the major-domo, who carried on the Govern- 
ment and who alone of all his subjects enjoyed the 
right of access to him. So great was the power of 
the Shogun, so complete its outer manifestation, both 
at the beginning and at the close of the Tokugawa 
regime, that Europeans who came to Japan invariably 
termed him "His Majesty." The learned Jesuits of the 



14 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

16th and I7th centuries, the equally learned Dutch 
savants of the 18th century, and the diplomatists of 
the 19th century all erred alike. They heard vaguely 
of another Emperor who was never seen either by his 
own subjects or by them, not even when they visited 
the holy city of Kioto in which he lived, of whom they 
were told as a sacred being of divine origin, vested 
with divine prerogatives and shrouded in impene- 
trable mystery, but powerless as a political factor 
in the state, so much so that neither the Jesuit 
missionaries nor the Dutch traders seem ever to 
have made the smallest effort to enlist his influence 
in their favour. 

On the other hand, what they termed "the 
Emperor," but who was in reality the Shogun, the 
Mayor of the Palace, was very vividly present to 
the eyes and thoughts of both. His authority over 
all the realm was undisputed. AU the feudal lords, 
both great and small, rendered homage to him, and 
though exercising almost unlimited autonomy in their 
own domains accepted his orders with unquestioning 
obedience. He had great wealth of his own, the 
yearly revenue from his family estates amounting to 
eight millions sterling in an age when the purchasing 
power of money was manifold what it now is. He 
had at his call an immense army of devoted samurai, 
he had a council of able ministers and he lived in 
imperial splendour, that was apparent to all, both 




The Emperor Komei 



I] HISTORICAL SKETCH 15 

natives and foreigners, in the great city of Yedo 
which in size, wealth and population far outshadowed 
the ancient and venerated capital of Kioto. To the 
Jesuits, fresh from the splendours of Rome, Madrid or 
Lisbon, his palace seemed in its grandeur, glittering 
with gold, "like an enchanted palace," and when 
attended by a great and stately escort he made royal 
progresses beyond its walls, the streets were all 
cleared of everything that could offend his sight ; 
the upper windows of all houses closed so that none 
could look down on him ; no fires could be lighted 
for two days beforehand lest the sky should be ob- 
scured, and all people humbly prostrated themselves 
on the ground as he passed by. 

When Europeans once more made their appear- 
ance on the shores of Japan, no longer as abject 
suppliants like the Dutch, but demanding ingress as 
a right and prepared to support their demands with 
irresistible force, the Emperor was still a myth in 
their eyes. The Shogun was the de facto sovereign 
with whom they had to deal and as far as they knew, 
in their ignorance of the history and institutions of 
Japan, he was also the dejure sovereign. In Perry's 
treaty he was described as "the August Sovereign 
of Japan," and in the first English treaty — that of 
Admiral Stirling concluded in 1854 — as "His Imperial 
Highness, the Emperor " : in Lord Elgin's Treaty of 
1858, as "His Majesty the Tycoon," and in the 



16 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

Prussian Treaty of 1861, as "Seine Majestat der 
Taikun." The title "Tycoon" or more properly 
"Taikun" was a new one adopted from China. Its 
literal signification is "Great Lord." 

The new treaties came into force in 1858. The 
ports of Yokohama, Nagasaki and Hakodate were 
opened to foreign trade and residence. Diplomatic 
representatives of the Treaty Powers took up their 
residence in Yedo and their countrymen began to 
live and trade at the opened ports. The Shogun 
apparently retained all his power and influence and 
the country was governed by his ministry with whom 
alone the foreign diplomatists had any direct re- 
lations. But a revolution had already begun which 
was destined within one decade to destroy utterly 
the political fabric that had lasted for more than 
seven centuries and to restore to the legitimate 
Emperor all the executive functions that were his 
undoubted constitutional prerogative. 

CHAPTER II 

RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 

Iyeyasu in his old age devoted himself to the 
study and encouragement of literature. His grand- 
son, the feudal lord of the province of Mito and the 
chief of one of the Go Sankei, the three families in 



II] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 17 

which was vested the succession to the Shogunate in 
the event of failure of the direct line, inherited all 
his grandfather's literary tastes and, unlike him, was 
able to devote his whole life to their cultivation, 
lyeyasu favoured the study of the Confucian classics 
and other masterpieces of the ancient literature of 
China. The Lord of Mito, on the other hand, was 
attracted by the ancient records of Japan which told 
the story of the creation and of the divine descent 
of the Emperors. Under his patronage, the great 
scholars whom he gathered around him in his pro- 
vince from all parts of the Empire compiled the 
Dai~NiJion-SM, the History of Great Japan from 
the accession of the mythical Emperor Jimmu in 
660 B.C. to the abdication in 1414 a.d. of Go Komatsu, 
the ninety-ninth Emperor of the line. This great 
work was completed in 1715, and it was followed, 
one hundred years later, by the Nihon Guaishi, the 
External History of Japan, which told the true 
history of the Shogunate, from its foundation by 
Yoritomo in the 12th century down to the accession 
of lyeyasu. Both works were eagerly read by scholars 
throughout the Empire. Their whole spirit was that 
the Emperor is the true and only legitimate sovereign, 
the lineal descendant of the Gods of Heaven by whom 
Japan was created, the first and best of all the lands 
on earth ; that to him alone the unquestioning alle- 
giance of every loyal Japanese is due ; and that the 

L. 2 



18 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

Shoguns were usurpers, who, themselves of no higher 
degree than the other feudal lords, had vested them- 
selves with the supreme executive authority by the 
power of the sword. 

These doctrines were eagerly imbibed by the 
greatest of the feudal lords, who were traditional 
enemies of the House of Tokugawa but had yielded 
to its superior strength and to the irresistible military 
and political genius of lyeyasu. Prominent among 
them were the chiefs of the great southern fiefs of 
Choshiu and Satsuma. They were themselves he- 
reditary foes but both had been long fretting under 
the domination of the Shogun with all its attendant 
disabilities, and their impatience was intensified by 
the incapacity and sloth of several of lyeyasu's later 
successors. Both hated each other but both hated 
their Tokugawa oppressor still more, and only awaited 
a plausible cause and a favourable opportunity for 
combining their arms against him and enlisting the 
aid of other feudal chiefs who were in the same 
position as themselves. Both cause and opportunity 
were furnished by the arrival of Europeans and their 
demand that the country should be opened to them. 

While the great sea Powers of Europe were too 
fully occupied in their own international jealousies 
and in the acquisition and expansion of colonies 
comparatively near at hand to bestow even a thought 
on a remote and unknown island Empire of whose 



II] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 19 

people and resources they were entirely ignorant, 
Japan had acquired interest and importance in the 
eyes of the United States of America. The Western 
States of the Union were growing in commercial 
value, and it was already foreseen that the Pacific 
might become a highway of trade between America 
and the rich and populous Empire of China. Japan 
lay in the ocean fairway between the two countries 
and it was of vital interest to American shipping, 
trading between them, that it should have the right 
of access to Japanese harbours. The United States 
Government, entirely unhampered by either domestic 
or foreign complications, determined therefore to 
establish intercourse with the Japanese, to induce 
them to enter into treaty relations, by persuasion if 
possible, if not by force, and thus secure guarantees 
for the future protection and assistance of United 
States ships when in Japanese waters. The mission 
was entrusted to Commodore Perry and successfully 
carried out by him, and on the 31st of March 1854, 
Japan signed her first formal treaty with a Western 
Power. 

Along with the revival of loyalty to the Emperor 
another doctrine, ancillary to it, had also won many 
disciples. This was that Japan is the Land of the 
Gods, and only those who are children of the Gods 
are worthy to dwell in it, that the presence of outer 
Barbarians is sacrilege to be avoided at all cost and 

2—2 



20 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

at all risks. When Perry arrived, " Peace and Pros- 
perity of long duration had," it was said, " enervated 
the spirit, rusted the armour and blunted the swords 
of the Samurai " and incapacitated them for military 
service against the Barbarians in their heavily-armed 
ships. The Shogun, only too conscious of the national 
impotency to resist the demand that was made in no 
uncertain language, yielded, and by doing so at once 
became a traitor to the Emperor and the country. 
The cry was raised "Sonno Joi," "Honour the Emperor 
and expel the Barbarians," and it was eagerly taken 
up by the leaders and clansmen of the Satsuma, 
Choshiu and other great southern fiefs, and made by 
them a pretext for initiating hostilities against the 
hated Government beneath which they had so long 
cowered. 

The Emperors had, as already explained, been, 
with a very few striking exceptions, political nullities 
throughout the whole existence of the Shogunate. 
It happened that the Emperor Komei, the 120th 
of his line, who occupied the throne at this period, 
formed one of these exceptions. He had never fallen 
into the physical and mental incapacity of his fore- 
runners and was now in the very prime of early 
manhood. All the revived traditions of his house 
and country had entered deeply into his heart, and 
he hated both the Shogunate, by which he knew he 
had been despoiled of his Imperial prerogatives, and 



II] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 21 

with a still more mastering passion the foreigners, who 
were now polluting his country with their presence. 
His hatred against both Shogun and foreigner was 
intensified by the thought that the treaties which 
the former had traitorously signed, under which the 
foreigners lived within his dominions, were a new 
and farther outrage on his prerogatives, a violation 
of the constitutional principle, which had existed 
throughout all ages, that great national changes 
required the formal sanction of the Emperor, nominal 
though his authority was. The indignation of both 
Emperor and Court was strong, and all their sympathy 
was with the great feudal chiefs who were now in 
open rebellion. 

We need not enter into the details of the civil 
war, a war which was fought with great bitterness, 
much bloodshed and varying fortune. In the end, 
the revolutionaries were completely successful, but 
before that climax was reached the deaths occurred 
within a very short interval of the two principal 
figures of the times. In September 1866, lyemochi, 
the fourteenth Shogun of the Tokugawa line, died 
and was succeeded by Yoshinobu, who was destined 
to be the last of the dynasty. lyemochi was little 
more than a boy, who was entirely in the hands 
of his ministers and vassals. Yoshinobu, on the other 
hand, had already, on his accession, arrived at man- 
hood, and was fully capable of forming his own 



22 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

opinion and exercising his judgment on the changing 
conditions of Japanese life and politics. The death 
of lyemochi was followed within six months by that 
of the conservative and bigoted Emperor Komei, and 
the reverse of what had occurred in the case of the 
Shogunate happened in regard to the succession to 
the Imperial throne. 

While Perry's mission was being organised at 
Washington an event took place in Kioto which was 
destined to have even a greater influence on Japan's 
history than Perry's eventful mission. On the 3rd of 
November, 1852, a son was born to the Emperor, his 
mother being the Lady Nakayama, the daughter of a 
cadet branch of the Fujiwara family, one of the Jugo 
(morganatic wives) who, from time immemorial, have 
been united to the Emperor by ties only one degree 
less formal and no less binding than those which unite 
him to the Empress. In accordance with custom and 
law, the child at once became the legitimate son of 
the Emperor and of the Empress, but it was not till 
he was eight years old, and all hope had gone of the 
Empress bearing a son of her own, that he was pro- 
claimed Imperial Crown Prince and heir-apparent to 
his father's throne. The Emj)eror Komei, as already 
indicated, was a man of strong character and will, 
saturated with political convictions which he was 
determined to enforce in so far as his circumstances 
permitted. His successor was the boy whose birth 




The Emperor Yoshi Hito 



II] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 23 

has just been described, and who was not yet fifteen 
years of age. He had been brought up in the rigidly 
conservative atmosphere of the Court, subject to the 
influence of his father and of the courtiers in the 
closest attendance on him, but he had had the ad- 
vantage of personal tutors, one at least of whom 
already saw that Japan's days of isolation were over 
and that a new era had dawned. Whatever his own 
boyish sentiments may have been, he was of necessity 
dependent on the advice of his ministers during the 
earlier years of his reign. They were at his accession 
still all outwardly devoted to the policy of his father, 
the expulsion at all costs of the hated foreigners from 
the divine land of the Gods, but two events which had 
occurred during the lifetime of the Emperor Komei 
had already convinced even the most bigoted among 
them that in Japan's condition at the time, ignorant 
as she was of all the modern science of war and 
divided by bitter feuds among her own people, 
the successful accomplishment of ^ this policy was 
hopeless. 

The two events were the bombardment of Kago- 
shima, the capital city of the gi-eat Satsuma fief, by 
the British fieet in 1863, and the bombardment of 
Shimonoseki, the stronghold of the equally great 
Choshiu fief, by the allied fleets of Great Britain, 
France, the United States and Holland in 1865. The 
object of the first was to exact reparation for the 



24 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

murder of a British subject; of the second to open 
to foreign shipping the Straits of Shimonoseki which 
the ruler of the fief had determined to keep closed. 
Satsuma and Choshiu were the two most powerful 
fiefs in the Empire. Both had warmly and enthusi^ 
astically adopted the exclusionist policy though from 
dififerent motives, Choshiu being a sincere and whole- 
hearted advocate of it, while Satsuma used it mainly 
<as a means of embarrassing the Tokugawa Govern- 
ment. Both suffered severely, Satsuma in the loss 
of ships and men, and in the destruction of a great 
part of the capital — it may be mentioned that the 
British fleet did not come out of the action scathe- 
less — and Choshiu in the silencing of all the forts on 
the narrow straits which he had fondly believed to be 
impregnable, and in the defeat of the flower of his 
army by the allied forces landed from the fleets after 
the silencing of the forts. The results were the same 
in both cases. The feudatories recognised Japan's 
military impotency against the great Powers of the 
West, and thinking men learned the great lesson that 
national unity was essential to national safety, and 
that one of the first requisites to national unity was 
the abolition of the dual form of government of 
Emperor and Shogun. 

The lessons learned at such cost by Satsuma and 
Choshiu were soon imbibed, not only by other great 
feudatories, but even by some of the Imperial courtiers 



II] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 25 

at Kioto. They could not however as yet be openly 
acknowledged. The civil war was still in progress. 
The Emperor Komei was still obstinate in his old con- 
victions, and the old cry of " Expel the Barbarians " 
was still the most potent charm for all the enemies 
of the Shogunate, few of whom were even yet en- 
lightened enough to understand, still less to acknow- 
ledge, the new position in which Japan found herself. 
Two years later, the death of the Emperor removed 
one great obstacle, and then a far-reaching step was 
taken by a third feudatory, the lord of Tosa, a fief 
that was inferior in wealth and strength only to 
Satsuma and Choshiu. He addressed a memorial to 
the new Shogun, pointing out Japan's helplessness 
in the face of foreigners and its own internal dis- 
organisation, urging as the only remedy the com- 
plete restoration of the executive authority to the 
Imperial Government in whom alone it could be 
legally vested. 

The memorial expressed only what was in the 
Shogun's ow^i thoughts, and urged a course of action 
which he himself had already seen to be inevitable. 
On the one side were the Court and the great majority 
of the feudatories plotting for his fall, many of the 
latter in arms against him, and all outwardly clamor- 
ing for the expulsion of the foreigners. On the other 
were the diplomatic representatives of the Foreign 
Powers, pressing him to fulfil the obligations he had 



26 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

undertaken in the treaties, and, in their ignorance 
of the political conditions of Japan, utterly unable to 
appreciate or make any allowance for the domestic 
difficulties which surrounded him. The lessons taught 
by the bombardments of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki, 
though the most bitter domestic enemies of his own 
house had been the sufferers in both cases, had not 
been wasted on him. He saw that a country divided 
as Japan was into local principalities, no one of which 
interested itself in any calamities that might befall 
its neighbour, among whom there were no common 
interests, where all patriotism was local and not 
national, could have no hope of being able to with- 
stand foreign aggression, and he knew enough of the 
fate of India and of the spoliation of China to be 
assured that foreign aggression was an imminent 
danger so long as Japan was helpless to defend her- 
self. No national unity could be attained while the 
dual system of government continued, and yielding 
to the teaching of his youth, while he was still a cadet 
of the house of Mito, in which the doctrine of loyalty 
to the Emperor had its birth, to the experience of his 
manhood, and to the high ideal of self-sacrificing 
patriotism which was the product of both, worn out 
too by the helplessness of his position and all the 
heart burnings and humiliations entailed by his in- 
ability to coerce his domestic enemies on the one side 
or to carry out the engagements his Government had 



II] RESTORATION OF THE EMPEROR 27 

made with foreign powers on the other, he resigned 
his office of Shogun and restored the national execu- 
tive to its proper source, the Emperor. 

By doing so he not only surrendered the supreme 
executive authority of the Empire, which had been 
held by his family for 260 years, but ended the dual 
system of government, which had lasted from the 
12th century. All this occupied little more than 
one year. It was on the 19th of September, 1866, 
that the fourteenth Shogun died, and on the 6th of 
January, 1867, Yoshinobu was nominated his suc- 
cessor. The Emperor Komei died and was succeeded 
by his only son, Mutsu Hito, on the 3rd of February, 
1867, and it was on the 9th of November in the same 
year that the new Emperor received the Shogun's 
resignation and assumed in its complete reality the 
authority which had belonged to his remote ancestors. 
It was on the day he did so that the foundation stone 
of modern Japan was laid. Much was yet to be 
accomplished, more blood was to be shed before 
Japan entered on the iiaths of social, political and 
industrial reform on which she was destined to make 
such great advances, but the first step had been 
accomplished and the promoters of the revolution 
were free to take in the name of the boy Emperor, 
who had just ascended the throne, such measures 
as were incumbent to ensure the consolidation and 
permanency of the new Government. 



28 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 
CHAPTER HI 

REFORMS IN FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 

The reader will have gathered from the i)recediiig 
chapters that while the main object of the promoters 
of the Restoration was the destruction of the Shogmi- 
ate and the revival of the Imperial regime, they had 
utilised the cry of " expel the barbarian," in order to 
cement in one common bond of union all the fighting 
forces of the Empire not bound to the Tokugawa 
cause by ties of consanguinity or material interest. 
They had encouraged the fanatics who abounded 
everywhere in the exercise of their hatred to the 
foreigner, seeing how much it contributed to the 
complications of the sorely-harassed Shogunate in 
its last years. The late Emperor had, in formal 
rescripts, conveyed his unqualified approval to the 
Satsuma and Choshiu fiefs, when they fought against 
the fleets of Great Britain and the allied Powers, and 
public sentiment had no less approved of the deeds 
of the many assassins by whom unofiending Euro- 
peans were over and over again cruelly and savagely 
murdered. Twice, almost in the very heart of the 
Shogun's capital, the British Legation was attacked 
at night by large bands of armed samurai, with the 
avowed object of murdering all its inmates, and the 



Ill] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 29 

assailants were regarded as devoted patriots by all 
their compeers. The officials of the Foreign Legations, 
the only foreigners who resided in Yedo, had all to 
be closely guarded both when within their Legations 
and when they ventured outside the walls, and so 
insecure was the position of all Europeans in Japan, 
that large garrisons of English and French troops 
were quartered by their governments in Yokohama 
to afford to the traders resident there the protection 
which it was believed the Shogunate had not the 
power to secure. 

All who had shared the anti-foreign sentiment and 
had fought for their beliefs, fondly believed that the 
moment the Emperor regained his own an anti-foreign 
campaign would be at once instituted under the 
Emperor's banner, and they were as ready to give 
their swords to it as they had been to the over- 
throw of the Shogun. But while the cry of " expel 
the foreigner " had been openly used to the very last, 
so long as the Shogun was a power to be feared, a 
change had during the last years of the struggle taken 
place in the minds of the leaders of the movement. 
The two most powerful fiefs who took an active part 
in it had received severe lessons of the consequences 
of indulging in armed resistance to European powers. 
Some of the courtiers had also imbibed more liberal 
sentiments, under the influence of the leaders of the 
fiefs, and there was a sufficiently influential body of 



30 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

capable men around the young Emperor to mould his 
opinions and to develop in his name, while he was 
still too young to take the direct personal control of 
state affairs which was his right, the policy that they 
now believed was essential to the future integrity 
and progress of Japan. This j)oiicy meant a complete 
subversal of all that they had hitherto openly advo- 
cated, but it was at once boldly and publicly adopted. 

On the 8th of February, 1868, a nobleman of high 
rank in the Court delivered to the Diplomatic Repre- 
sentatives of the foreign powers a formal document 
bearing the sign manual of the Emperor and sealed 
with " The Seal of Great Japan " for transmission to 
their Governments, in which the Emperor announced 
his intention of thenceforward exercising supreme 
authority both in the internal and external affairs of 
the country and of substituting in the treaties his 
own title for that of the Tycoon. This was followed 
a week later by a public rescript in which it was pro- 
claimed that " intercourse with foreign countries shall 
in future be carried on in accordance with the public 
law of the whole world," and, as a first onward step on 
this path, an invitation soon followed to the Repre- 
sentatives to visit Kioto and be received in audience 
by His Majesty. 

Kioto had been for more than a thousand years 
the sacred city of the Empire. It had been visited 
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the 




m^\ 


7 




^ 


^ i 


■ 1 


H-l 


If ^ 




y -+- 


^ a 


^ ;f:: 


^ # 






\ \ \ 


, ^ 



Sign Manual and Seal of the Emperor Mutsu Hito 



Ill] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 31 

Jesuit missionaries, and Xavier and many of his 
disciples had openly preached the Christian doctrine 
in its streets. The Dutch traders had passed through 
it when on their way from Desima on their com- 
pulsory annual missions to the Shogun's court at 
Yedo. But neither had ever approached the i^alace 
or dreamt of audience with its holy occupant, and 
the Dutch always i^assed through the city closely 
guarded as though they were prisoners. Now the 
foreigners, who a very few years before had been 
publicly designated by the late Emperor as "Sea 
pirates," " Ugly Barbarians," and " Foul beasts," were 
not only to be admitted to the holy city but were to 
be received in person by the direct descendant of 
the Gods of Heaven ; they were to approach him 
erect and not humbly on their knees Avith foreheads 
touching the ground, and to gaze upon him with no 
intervening screen between him and them, such as 
had hitherto veiled his sacred person from the eyes 
even of the highest and noblest of his own people, 
even of the Great Lord, the Shogun, when at the very 
summit of his might and grandeur. 

It is difficult even for a thinking Japanese of 
modern days to appreciate the significance of this 
event or to realise the profound impression which 
it created on those who had fought and schemed for 
the renewal of Japan's time-honoured seclusion. The 
ceremony was destined not to pass without its tragedy. 



32 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

one of the many which darkened those days of our 
intercourse with Japan. When Sir Harry Parkes, the 
British representative, who had been the first among 
his colleagues to recognise the new Government and 
to give it his strong moral support, was on his way 
to the palace, two fanatics, maddened at the desecra- 
tion of the Emperor and of the city, suddenly attacked 
his English escort and inflicted severe wounds on ten 
of the men composing it, before they were themselves 
killed or disabled. 

The audience had to be postponed till the follow- 
ing day, but the incident, unhappy and tragic as it 
was, was not without its good results. It gave the 
young Emperor, who was receiving Europeans for the 
first time, not only in his own life but in all the long 
history of his dynasty, and whose mind was no doubt 
full of curiosity, an opportunity for expressing, with 
the sympathetic tact and dignity which characterized 
him in after life, his regret at what had happened and 
of manifesting his desire to prevent its recurrence. 
Hitherto every samurai who murdered a European 
thought that he was putting his sword, his most 
treasured possession, to the noblest use he could 
make of it and that he was performing a service to 
his gods, his Emperor and his country. If he was 
brought to justice and had to pay the penalty of his 
act, both law and custom permitted him to be his 
own executioner and to find death in a way that 



Ill] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 33 

brought no dishonour on either him or his relatives, 
which was in fact the consummation of martyrdom. 
An Imperial rescript was issued within a few days 
ordering the nation : — 

to obey His Majesty's will in the fulfilment of the Treaties with 
Foreign Countries in accordance with the rules of International Law, 

and declaring that : — 

all persons in future guilty of murdering foreigners or of committing 
acts of violence towards them will be acting in opposition to His 
Majesty's express orders and be the cause of national misfortune. 
They will therefore be punished in proportion to the gravity of their 
offence, and their names, if samurai, will be erased from the roll. 

The last clause involved not only social degrada- 
tion to the offender and his family, but a humiliating 
death to the former at the hands of the public execu- 
tioner. Thenceforward the miu-derer of a foreigner 
lost the character of a martyr and became a common 
criminal like any robber or tliie£ From that day 
outrages of this nature entirely ceased. Europeans 
have, it is true, since been murdered by natives in 
Japan, but these have been cases of sordid crime 
such as occur in any country, and in none were the 
murderers actuated solely by political or religious 
motives. 

Amidst all these indications of the new policy of 
peace within and of good will to all men without the 
Empire, one dark spot was allowed to continue. It 

L. 3 



34 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

was an element of the domestic policy of the Toku- 
gawas to conceal the provisions of the criminal laws 
from the nation. They believed that people were 
more likely to abstain from crime when they were 
ignorant of, than they would be if they knew, the 
utmost penalty by which their crime was punishable. 
One exception was made in the observance of this 
policy. In all the principal streets of every great 
city, in every village and at intervals along every 
high road, public notice-boards were erected in con- 
spicuous form and places on which the great standing 
laws of the Empire, the laws which are the foundation 
of society and government, were proclaimed to all 
who passed. They were very few in number. They 
prohibited insurrection, conspiracy, murder, arson 
and robbery, and enjoined the observance of the five 
social relations which are the basis of all morality 
according to the Confucian code. But the most 
prominent prohibition, which stood at the very front 
of the notice boards, was : — 

The evil sect called Christian is strictly prohibited. Suspicious 
persons should be reported to the proper ofi&cers and rewards will be 
given. 

These notices, including the prohibition of Chris- 
tianity, were retained. The memories of the terrible 
persecution at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century and of the awful sufferings which it entailed 
on tens of thousands of native converts had been 



Ill] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 35 

handed down from father to son through all the 
intervening years and made the very name of Chris- 
tianity a subject of loathing and terror to Japanese 
of all classes. No anxiety to cultivate European good 
will or to fulfil the professions of friendship which 
were constantly in the mouths of the members of the 
new government could induce them to abolish or 
modify the old practice. 

The foreign policy of the Emperor having been 
fully manifested to his people, the domestic policy 
remained to be declared, and it was soon seen that it 
was to be no less revolutionised than the foreign. As 
a first step the Emperor was to see and be seen by 
his people. He was no longer to be an Imperial 
Hermit, surrounded with mystic sanctity in a palace, 
" where he lived behind a screen, far from the outward 
world, from which nothing could penetrate his sacred 
ear." He was to learn the condition of his people 
by his own direct observation and as an absolute 
monarch to take an active share in all measures for 
their government and education. His first public 
appearance was made in a visit to Osaka, the great 
commercial city of Japan, twenty miles from the 
capital. Even then his presence among the i)eople 
was more fictitious than real. Attended by an escort 
of over 10,000 men, he was carried in a palanquin, 
the bamboo blinds of which enabled him to see with- 
out himself being seen. From the shore he reviewed 

3—2 



36 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

the beginning of the Japanese fleet. It consisted of 
but six ships, all converted merchant steamers, not 
one of which exceeded 1000 tons or 300 horse power, 
and not one of them could yet be called his, all being 
owned by one or other of the great fiefs. The Toku- 
gawas possessed other and more formidable ships, 
manned by officers and men who had already had 
some professional training from British officers, but 
these still lay at Yedo and they never became Imperial 
property. They were destined to perish at Hakodate 
in the last fight that was made by the Tokugawa 
partisans. 

The task of forming the new system of administra- 
tion was vigorously pursued. A council of state was 
formed, seven departments were founded for the 
administration of the various branches of the Govern- 
ment, and all the feudal lords (daimio) having been 
summoned to Kioto, the Emperor in their presence 
and in that of all the Court nobles, assembled in 
solemn conclave, took what is known as the " Charter 
Oath," which as the foundation of modern constitu- 
tional liberty holds the same position in the history 
of Japan that the Magna Charta does in that of 
England. He promised, in the Oath, which consisted 
of five articles, that : — 

a deliberative assembly should be formed and all measures decided by 
public opinion ; that civil and military government should no longer 
be separated and that all classes of the people should with one mind 



Ill] FOREIGN" AND DOMESTIC POLICY 37 

devote themselves to the national welfare; that the rights of all 
classes should he assured ; that the uncivilized customs of antiquity 
should be abolished and impartiality and justice administered accord- 
ing to universally recognised principles ; and that intellect and learning 
should be sought for throughout the world, so that the foundations of 
the Empire might be firmly established. 

Th€ programme thus outlined was both extensive 
and ambitious and formulated a task which could only 
be carried to a successful accomplishment by earnest, 
courageous and able statesmen. Fortunately such 
were not wanting. At their head were some of the 
Court and feudal nobles, but their aggregate did not 
exceed half a dozen. The rest, about fifty in all, 
were samurai of the four great fiefs, Satsuma, 
Choshiu, Tosa and Hizen, men whose ability and 
courage had brought them to the front ; who, though 
of gentle birth, were low in rank, with no advantages 
of birth, means or education to difierentiate them 
from tens of thousands of their fellows. Associated 
with them as their guides in foreign affairs were a 
few young students of their own class who had the 
advantage of a short education in Europe. Of the 
first class the most prominent were Sanjo, a scion of 
a cadet branch of the illustrious Fujiwara family, and 
Iwakura of the Minamoto family, both nobles of the 
court, and Shimadzu Saburo, father of the Lord of 
Satsuma, and Yodo, Lord of Tosa, great feudal nobles. 
Among the samurai, the most distinguished in after 
life were Okubo and Saiffo, samurai of Satsuma ; 



38 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

Kido, a samurai of Choshiu, Okuma of Hizen and 
Itagaki of Tosa : while the students included Ito and 
Inouye of Choshiu, the first of whom may be called the 
constructor of Modern Japan, and the second has 
been one of its most distinguished statesmen and 
administrators. Both were mere youths in subordinate 
positions at the Restoration. The buttress on which 
all leant was the Emperor, and the new decrees, all 
of which were issued in his name, received from the 
nation the unquestioning obedience that was due to 
his divine prerogative. 

Further reforms were soon made. A new classifi- 
cation of the people was adopted. The old distinction 
between the court and feudal nobility was abolished 
and both were merged in one class under the title of 
Kwazoku or nobles, literally Flower Families. The 
remainder of the samurai, irrespective of the many 
gradations of rank in their own fiefs, were grouped 
under the title of Shizoku or gentry, and the rest 
of the people under that of Heimin or commoners. 
Kioto was the acknowledged capital of the Empire, 
but in the last three centuries Yedo had been the 
seat of the executive government, and the nation had 
grown accustomed to regard it as the source of all 
active authority. It was thought that the new 
Imperial executive would be more readily recognised 
if it were administered from the same seat as had 
been the old, and it was therefore decided that Yedo 



Ill] FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY 39 

should in future be the Imperial capital, its name 
being changed to Tokio or Eastern capital, by which 
it has since been known. 

This change was great and impressive, but it was 
thrown completely into the shade by one more 
profound and far-reaching which soon followed it. 
The Restoration had not yet entailed the abolition of 
feudalism. The feudal lords still continued to ad- 
minister their fiefs, to exercise the same imperium 
m imperio as they had done under the Tokugawas 
for many preceding centuries and to retain their local 
autocracy unimpaired. No complete unification of 
the Empire under one supreme ruler could be hoped 
for while they did so. The lords of the four great 
fiefs that had been foremost in the Restoration 
again took the lead, and in a memorial signed by all 
four they voluntarily surrendered their fiefs to the 
Emperor and where they led all others had perforce 
to follow. 

The memorial appeared in the Official Gazette on 
the 5th of March, 1869. It was at once accepted, but 
the mediatisation of the fiefs was not yet complete. 
At first their former lords were appointed Governors 
of, what they had hitherto owned, and while they 
acted in the name of the Emperor they continued to 
collect and administer their own revenues, paying, 
however, a contribution to the Imperial treasury, and 
to retain many of their old privileges. To deprive 



40 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [oh. 

them of all at one stroke would have been too drastic 
a step for a Government which at the time had 
neither army nor money and had to rely entirely on 
the goodwill of these feudatories for the enforcement 
of its decrees on any among them who might prove 
recalcitrant, and it was not till two years later that 
the step was finally completed in its fullest measure. 
Then the last blow was given to the system of 
feudalism. On the 29th of August, 1871, all the 
daimio were ordered to quit their fiefs and take up 
their residences for the future as private gentlemen 
in Tokio, without either administrative or executive 
authority, without even titles to distinguish them 
from the common herd. Ten per cent, of their former 
revenues were assigned to them for their support, 
but they were at the same time relieved from the 
maintenance of the armies of samurai who had 
hitherto depended on them. Their castles, muni- 
tions and ships were handed over to the Government. 
Their fiefs were converted into prefectures adminis- 
tered by officials, with no local prejudices, appointed 
by the central Government ; all their revenues were 
paid into the Imperial Treasury, from which in turn 
all expenses both for their own and their samurai's 
pensions and for administration were defrayed. 
Uniform systems of law and currency were estab- 
lished, and at last a national Government, both in 
name and fact, was firmly consolidated in the hands 



IV] SOCIAL REFORMS 41 

of the Emperor and the ministers wlio acted for 
him. Then in reality began the modern Empire of 
Japan. 



CHAPTER lY 

SOCIAL REFORMS 

The civil war was terminated and peace estab- 
lished throughout the Empire by the subjugation of 
the last adherents of the Tokugawas at Hakodate 
in July 1869. The Emperor was firmly seated on 
his throne at Tokio and the acknowledged executive 
head of the nation, whose will none would dare to 
dispute. The statesmen who, supported by his divine 
authority, acted in his name had, throughout the 
long civil and military struggles which preceded his 
Restomtion, already shown that they possessed not 
only determined courage but considerable political 
judgment. They had the sympathy, so far as it 
could be given without detriment to the interests 
of their own countries, of the foreign diplomatic 
representatives and therefore of the great powers 
of the West. But the task before them was enough 
to daunt the boldest courage. It was one that could 
only be carried to success by iron will, unflagging 
industry and unruffled patience. None more difficult 
has ever faced the statesmen of any country in the 



42 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

world's history. None has ever in its triumphant 
issue more completely realised the greatest ambitions 
of those who initiated it. 

The social condition of the people until the aboli- 
tion of feudalism has been already described. The 
masses, sunk in ignorance and political degradation, 
had to be educated and raised to the status of self- 
respecting citizens, equitably sharing both the obli- 
gations and privileges of their superiors. Many of 
the samurai still cherished their old ideas as to the 
expulsion of foreigners, still more the retention of 
their caste privileges, and they had to be taught 
that they must in future assume a share in the 
burthens of life, and become producers as well as 
consumers. The Government had neither army nor 
navy. Its treasury was empty and it had no settled 
revenue. The national industry was capable of little 
more than supplying domestic necessaries. Internal 
communications were destitute of all but the most 
primitive facilities. Neither railways, telegraphs, 
posts nor mercantile marine existed. Foreign trade 
already annually amounted in value to some millions 
sterling, but it was entirely in the hands of foreign mid- 
dlemen, and carried on under such disabilities that the 
cost of conveying a bale of goods fifty miles between 
the seaport at which it was landed and the interior 
where it was consumed exceeded that of its fi-eight 
between Europe and Japan, though ocean freights 



IV] SOCIAL REFORMS 43 

were then on a far higher scale than they are at the 
present day. Of all modern sciences, the people 
were almost entirely ignorant. The only exceptions 
were surgery and medicine, of which some knowledge 
had been acquired through the physicians of the 
Dutch factory at Nagasaki. One at least of the 
Western Powers pressed or threatened claims which, 
if yielded, would impair the territorial integrity of 
the Empire, and one and all insisted on the retention 
of the extra-territorial clauses in the treaties, which, 
it was now known, were a slur on Japan's prestige 
as a civilised and independent Power. The solution 
of all these problems had to be undertaken simul- 
taneously by a ministry whose members, notwith- 
standing their courage and judgment, were as yet only 
students in domestic or international statescraft, 
who, in carrying out reform, had to overcome the 
most bigoted conservative j)rejudice and to face con- 
stantly the risk of assassination, a risk which, in many 
instances, culminated in realisation. 

Fortunately for themselves and for their country, 
the ministers had, at this period, the aid and council 
of one of the ablest representatives that have served 
Great Britain in the Far East. Sir Harry Parkes, 
after a long career in China, was appointed H. M. 
Minister in Japan in 1865. Throughout all the 
political crises antecedent to the Restoration he 
had given his sympathy to the Imperialists and was 



44 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

therefore entitled to their confidence and gratitude 
when they came into power. Great Britain was then, 
both as a political and economic factor, predominant 
over all other Western Powers in the Far East. Her 
military and naval prestige had been amply vindi- 
cated both in China and in Japan. British troops 
guarded Yokohama, and both her naval and mer- 
cantile flags were seen in every port. Her consular 
service was specially organised for service in Japan. 
All its members were specially trained from youth 
and it is to many among them that we owe the 
knowledge we now possess of the language, literature, 
history and economics of Japan. Her merchants were 
far above those of other countries in number, wealth, 
enterprise and honesty. The minister was in every 
way worthy of the status of his country. He was 
a man of untiring and unflagging industry, of irre- 
sistible strength of will and character, of indomitable 
moral and physical courage, and of far-seeing poli- 
tical intelligence. His methods were often hard and 
aj^parently tyrannical and enforced by the mailed fist 
rather than gently carried through with velvet gloves, 
and his object in promoting Japan's progress was 
frankly avowed to be the interests of his own country- 
men rather than the welfare of Japan. Great Britain 
had no territorial aims. Her sole object in cultivating 
intercourse with Japan was trade. The conception 
of Japan as a valuable political and military ally of 



IV] SOCIAL REFORMS 45 

Great Britain had not then even entered into the 
thoughts of either Japanese or British statesmen, 
but the more Japan advanced in her own material 
welfare, the more was she likely to require and buy 
from Great Britain, then the workshop of the world, 
and that consideration was in itself sufficient to 
induce the British Minister to use his best efforts 
in starting and urging Japan on her career of pro- 
gress according to the standards of modern European 
civilisation. In every reform that she undertook, 
the British Minister was consulted. His advice was 
freely and honestly given, and throughout the first 
decade of the Imperial Government's existence there 
was scarcely one detail in all the great reforms that 
were undertaken in which he had not a share, very 
often in its initiation, always in its progress. 

In another respect, the Government were equally 
fortunate, though that they were so was largely 
owing to the first. It is a common text with super- 
ficial English writers on Japan, that Japan reformed 
herself: that her own statesmen saw of themselves the 
immense material superiority of Western civilisation 
to that which she owed to China and converted their 
people to the same view : that all she has since 
achieved in material progress is due not only to the 
initiation but to the industry and perseverance of 
her own sons. Nothing could be further from the 
truth. Her entry into the paths of Western civilisation 



46 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

was largely owing to the persistent goading of Sir 
Harry Parkes : her subsequent achievements to the 
tuition of the large band of foreign experts whom 
she had the good fortune to enlist in her service, 
and who served her as loyally and whole-heartedly 
as they did efficiently. Most of them were still 
young men when they entered her service but they 
were the best products of their own countries, in 
which many of them subsequently rose to high 
eminence in their respective professional spheres. 
Great Britain gave her the naval officers who 
founded her navy and first trained its personnel. 
It also gave her the engineers who constructed her 
first railways, lighthouses, waterworks, mines and 
telegraphs, and the founders of her mint, her bank- 
ing system and her press. The United States con- 
tributed in like way to her postal and educational 
systems : France to her army and dockyards and 
to legal reform : Germany to her medical science 
and to the creation of her constitution : and Italy 
to her military arsenals. All these nations contri- 
buted their quotas to the modern development of 
Japan, and to their sons is due, in no small degree, 
the eminence which she has since attained in all 
spheres of human life and civilisation. The teachers 
had apt and industrious students, not only keen 
for their own personal advancement but inflamed with 
patriotic enthusiasm to serve their country and to 



IV] SOCIAL REFORMS 47 

contribute all their best abilities in realising their 
Emperor's oath " to establish firmly the foundations 
of the Empire," but their ability, industry and 
enthusiasm would have had little result had they not 
been fortunate in their teachers. 

Another class must not be overlooked if due 
credit is given to all who have contributed to the 
creation of modern Japan. From the first there was 
a large body of European and American missionaries 
in Japan, and in recent years they have increased to 
what may be called a small army. They include 
members of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches 
and of several scores of sects of the Protestant 
church, and are of all nationalities. Their success 
as religious propagandists has not been very great, as 
might naturally be expected from the obstacles they 
have to overcome, both of tradition and present dis- 
couragement. The statistics of the several missionary 
societies show numbers of converts that appear large 
on paper, but taken at their most favourable estimate 
they constitute but a drop in the great ocean of the 
people. But on the other hand missionaries have 
rendered great educational services in their schools 
and by the example of their lives, faithful and self- 
denying, have exercised no inappreciable influence 
on the moral regeneration of the people among whom 
they live. 

The first step that was taken m social reform was 



48 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

one that augured a new spirit of humanity in the 
government. It dealt with criminal law and prison 
administration. The criminal law of the Empire was 
codified and published and though it still continued 
to be based on its original Chinese models and tor- 
ture was still retained as an incident in trials, great 
mitigations were made in the cruel and vindictive 
punishments which had hitherto characterised it. 
Prisons had hitherto been infernos of medieval 
horror. A commission was sent to visit and report 
on the prisons in the English colonies of Hong Kong 
and Singapore, and on its return, new prisons were 
at once constructed in which all that the commission 
had learnt from the English system as regards food, 
clothing, sanitation, cleanliness, and segregation of 
accused and convicted, was put in practice. In both 
cases these steps were only the beginning of greater 
and far more vital changes. The prison system was 
gradually improved until it reached a standard of 
efficiency that places it at the present day on a far 
higher plane of social civilisation than that of Great 
Britain. The duty of punishing the criminal is not 
lost sight of, but punishment is made subordinate 
to reformation. The first criminal code was only 
retained until a new one, compiled by a distinguished 
French jurist, with the assistance of Japanese experts 
in their own laws, could be completed. Civil codes 
of law were in the same way compiled by German 



IV] SOCIAL REFORMS 49 

jurists. In both, Western principles were adapted 
to the social conditions of Japan. Executive and 
judicial functions ceased to be vested in the same 
officials. Courts of Law were established, presided 
over by independent judges. A legal profession, 
manned by highly-educated practitioners, came into 
being and the change that was accomplished in little 
more than a quarter of a century was as great as 
that of England from the 16th century to the present 
day. 

Other great reforms came, as did those from 
China in the 6th century, "with a rush." A begin- 
ning was made in railway construction and the first 
railway between Yokohama and Tokio was opened 
in 1873. The dangerous and stormy coasts were 
lighted with the best modern appliances, postal 
and telegi'aphic services introduced, medical and 
engineering colleges founded, the first newspapers 
made their appearance, joint stock banks began to 
be a feature in commercial life, and a national mint 
was established, which provided an honest uniform 
coinage to replace the debased tokens previously in 
circulation. All had their beginning either in or 
about the year 1871, and though their progress 
towards the completeness and efficiency that now 
characterize them was spread over many years and 
only accomplished in the face of many disheartening 
difficulties and obstacles, their way has ever been 

L. ^4 



50 THE EVOLUTIO^^ OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

onwards, unmarked by as much as one retrograde 
step. The members of the Government showed them- 
selves to be capable and far-seeing leaders. They 
were willingly followed by a people who were of 
quick intelligence, accustomed to obey and willing to 
be taught. Here and there, throughout the country, 
spasmodic insurrections fi'om time to time occurred, 
instigated by a few surviving fanatics of the old 
school of seclusion and Chinese bigotry, but with 
one exception they were insignificant and easily 
quelled, with little loss of life on either side, and 
all changes were brought about in national peace, 
with the hearty co-operation of the people. 

Very early in her modern history it became 
Japan's avowed ambition to be in the Far East what 
England is in the West as a naval and commercial 
power, and English example encouraged her to create 
her present fine commercial marine and to start on 
the career of industrial and commercial progress 
which she now hopes, not without reason, will ere 
another generation has passed give her the com- 
mercial hegemony of the East. The efficiency and 
strength of the Japanese navy at the present day are 
known to all, and her mercantile flag is now seen in 
all the great harbours of the world. The Emperor 
had at first no army. His restoration to the throne 
and his security on it during the first years of his 
reign were due to the samurai of the feudatories who 



IV] SOCIAL REFORMS 51 

supported him. A national army, maintained by and 
owing obedience to the central Government alone, 
had to be created, and the duty imposed on the entire 
population of sharing in the military service hitherto 
monopolised by the samurai. In 1872, the intro- 
duction of a system of universal conscription was 
announced in an Imperial rescript. Under it, every 
male, without distinction of rank or class, was called 
on attaining the age of 20 years to serve with the 
colours for three years, followed by two periods, each 
of two years, in the first and second reserves, and 
then to continue enrolled in the territorial reserve 
until his fortieth year. The military machine which 
was thus instituted has since had four great tests. 
The first was in civil war, in the suppression of the 
Satsuma rebellion in 1877, when a well-equipped 
and well-trained force of 46,000 men of all arms was 
placed in the field. The second was in the war with 
China in 1894, when the full strength of the mobilised 
forces of 220,000 men was engaged. Tlie third was in 
the Boxer campaign of 1900, when the Japanese had 
their first opportunity of comparing themselves with 
European soldiers, and the last and greatest in the 
war with Russia, when fully one million men were 
mobilised for active service. The army emerged from 
aU these tests with triumphant success. 

In Japan popular education has always been 
general, and though the use of the heart-breakingly 

4—2 



52 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

difficult Chinese script rendered the acquisition of 
the arts of reading and writing infinitely more diffi- 
cult, the proportion of illiterate Japanese was smaller 
than in any European country. Education was, how- 
ever, notwithstanding the high value placed on it, 
carried on without state aid or supervision, almost 
entirely in private or temple schools, and its extent 
depended entirely on the means or will of the parents 
of the children. After the Restoration an entirely 
new departure was made. A Ministry of Public 
Education was one of the departments in the newly 
organised Government and with the aid of American 
experts a national and compulsory system of general 
education was initiated in the year 1871, under which 
every form of instruction was gradually provided, 
from that of the elementary schools where children 
are taught the principles of morality, foremost among 
them being loyalty and patriotism, and to read, write 
and cypher, up to that of the universities with faculties 
for the teaching of literature, philosophy and every 
branch of advanced science. It was the aim of the first 
reformers "that there should not be a village with 
an ignorant family nor a family with an ignorant 
member," and that aim has been nobly carried out, 
so much so that, just as Japan's naval and military 
efficiency falls behind that of no great power in the 
world, the educational facilities which she provides 
for her people are on a level with and in many of 



IV] SOCIAL REFORMS 53 

their incidents above those of the most enlightened 
nations, and the people are worthy of what the 
Government has done for them. Educational authori- 
ties and teachers are alike entirely immune fi'om one 
of the obstacles that has to be overcome by their 
colleagues in the West. Thirst for knowledge of 
every kind is a national characteristic, manifested 
even in young children, and no compulsion is required 
to ensure the most intense application on their part 
or the sacrifice to unremitting industry of the pleasures 
that are natural to children, youths and girls. The 
idler is unknown in Japanese schools and colleges, 
and as industry is a remedy for deficiency in aptitude, 
the dunce is rare. 

Other reforms that can only be mentioned here, 
made either in 1871 or very shortly afterwards, were 
the adoption of the Gregorian in place of the Chinese 
calendar ; the abolition of all sumptuary laws, and 
of all the old restrictions that limited men to the 
occupations of their fathers and their residence to 
the districts in which they were born ; the emancipa- 
tion of the peasants ; their release from forced labour, 
and their conversion from hereditary life-tenants into 
owners of the soil they tilled, paying to the Govern- 
ment an annual tax based on the value of their land, 
a tax which fell far below the heavy burthens they 
had borne under their old feudal lords but which 
formed the main source of the Imperial revenue till 



54 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

after the China war ; and the withdrawal of all pro- 
hibitions to go abroad for purposes of study, business 
or pleasure. 

The Emperor was still little more than a boy, but 
not only was his name used in every reform that was 
made, but each at its initiation and throughout the 
succeeding stages of its progress was countenanced 
by his presence in public. Reforms were devised and 
put into operation by his ministers, but that they 
were able to convince their countrymen of their 
wisdom and to carry them through all their early 
stages to ultimate success was mainly due to the 
public approval that was given to them by their 
Emperor and to the personal interest which he in- 
variably manifested in them. 



CHAPTER V 

DEVELOPMENT OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 

The first clause of the Emperor's Charter Oath 
declared that : — 

The practice of discussion and debate shall be universally adopted 
and all measures shall be decided by public opinion. 

This clause is the foundation stone of the edifice 
of constitutional Government in Japan. The full 
extent of the Emperor's promise was at the time far 



V] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 55 

fi'om being realised by its framers. All the leaders of 
the Restoration were still imbued with the principles 
of feudalism and its class distinctions when the oath 
was taken, and there was no idea of extending the 
privileges which it foreshadowed beyond the class of 
samurai, the only class in the nation who had then 
any consciousness of political rights, or who were by 
their circumstances and education capable of exer- 
cising them. This was clearly evidenced in the first 
attempt that was made to carry out the promise. A 
national council, to which the title of " Shugiin " or 
" Assembly of Legislative Discussion " was given, was 
convened at Tokio in 1869, almost exactly a year 
subsequent to the date of the oath. It consisted of 
276 representatives of the feudal clans, which had not 
yet been mediatised, all samurai nominated by their 
compeers in each clan. It was vested with no legisla- 
tive authority and was in fact nothing more than a 
debating club, whose discussions might take the form 
of advice, but had no likelihood of influencing legisla- 
tion, and its whole spirit testified the strong conserva- 
tism which was natural in its members. The assembly 
met both in 1869 and in 1870, and then died a natural 
death. 

The Government was during the two ensuing 
decades an arbitrary bureaucracy, the most prominent 
factors of which were members of the Satsuma and 
Choshiu fiefs, whose services at the Restoration 



56 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

entitled them to claim the majority of the most 
important executive and legislative offices. Umbrage 
was naturally taken at their favoured position by the 
clansmen of Tosa and Hizen, who considered their 
own services no less deserving of recognition than 
those of their Satsuma and Choshiu compeers, and 
who felt that that recognition would have been given 
to them if the nation had been enabled to make its 
voice heard. Their discontent found a mouthpiece in 
Itagaki, a Tosa samurai who had been prominent 
throughout all the incidents of the Restoration and 
had filled one of the cabinet offices in the new 
Government. Along with other members he resigned 
his office in 1873, on the question of declaring war 
against Korea, which is described in a subsequent 
chapter, and thenceforward he used his freedom from 
all official trammels to foment an agitation, which 
was especially vigorous in his own province of Tosa, 
in favour of a parliamentary system, and was recog- 
nised as the leader of national radicalism. 

In 1873 the spirit of the people was already 
greatly changed from what it had been in 1869 and 
political knowledge had begun to make its appearance 
among certain sections of the commoners. The press 
had grown in ability and influence, and, as yet un- 
fettered by any legal restrictions on its utterances, 
was outspoken in favour of constitutional monarchical 
government and in condemnation of a tyrannical 



V] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 57 

oligarchy such, as it was alleged, the Government of 
the Satsuma and Choshiu combination had become. 
Many students, who had been sent to England and 
the United States, were at this time returning to 
Japan on the completion of their studies. While 
abroad they had seen the prosperity and strength of 
the great countries of the West, and they ascribed 
both to the constitutional forms of government 
enjoyed in those countries, entirely failing to see that 
constitutional Government was the consequence and 
not the cause of what had aroused their admiration 
and wonder. Both in press and on platform they 
assailed the Government in writings and speeches of 
incendiary violence for its failure to carry out the 
pledge given by the Emperor, which they construed 
to mean a deliberative assembly, vested with full 
legislative powers, freely elected by and from the 
people. A situation was created which, in more 
recent times, has found its parallel in India and in 
Egypt. On the one side was a large and numerous 
party, principally composed of hot-headed and un- 
disciplined young men, with exaggerated ideas of 
their own knowledge and experience but strong in the 
leadership of a respected statesman, clamouring for 
a great political reform — on the other, the established 
Government, which, if autocratic in its methods, had 
earned the gratitude of the nation for steering it 
safely through the stress of revolution and for 



58 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

successfully initiating a new era of progress and im- 
provement, one of whose most marked features was 
the extension of individual liberty without which the 
agitator's methods would have been impossible. 

The Government, conscious of the utter unfitness 
of the people, only recently emancipated from the 
fetters of feudalism, for the intelligent exercise of the 
rights that were claimed for them, endeavoured to 
stem the agitation by issuing drastic laws for the 
control of the press and public meetings, but the laws 
were openly defied. The agitators, cheerfully and 
proudly, went to prison for long terms in scores, and 
their places were immediately filled by new men who 
continued their methods. Assassination was not only 
advocated but practised, and several distinguished 
members of the Government became its victims, while 
their surviving colleagues, guarded by fully-armed 
policemen both night and day, in the council chamber 
as well as in the public streets and in their own 
homes, led lives that were sufiicient to shatter the 
most iron nerves. This condition of aflairs continued 
until a temporary lull was occasioned by the great 
domestic crisis of the Satsuma rebellion in 1877, the 
last eflbrt made by the champions of aristocratic 
conservatism to stem by force of arms the tide of 
democratic progress on which the Government was 
fully launched, notwithstanding its uncompromising 
opposition to the national agitation for a parliamentary 



V] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 59 

system. The rebellion tested the strength of the 
Government to the utmost, but, while it lasted, political 
agitation ceased in face of the danger which threatened 
both to overthrow the Government and to restore 
some of the worst features of feudalism and of the 
dual executive of the Shogunate. 

When the rebellion was quelled, after a campaign 
that was costly both in life and treasure, the agitation 
that had been temporarily stilled broke out afresh 
and with intensified defiance of law and contempt of 
both life and liberty. Okubo, the ablest and most 
influential minister in the Government, fell by 
assassins' hands in 1878. Then a sop was given by 
the creation of elective local assemblies vested with 
some powers of administrative finance, but, welcomed 
though it was as the first step towards popular 
enfranchisement, it was far from satisfying the agita- 
tors. They not only continued to increase in numbers 
and in the violence of their methods, but received 
a new leader, equal in ability, in the distinguished 
service he had rendered at the Restoration, in the 
respect in which he was held by his countrymen, and 
far superior in his experience as a statesman and in 
administrative ability to Itagaki, in the person of 
Okuma, a samurai of Hizen, who seceded from the 
Government in 1881 and enrolled himself and his 
personal followers among the advocates of " Constitu- 
tional Government " in the widest sense of the term. 



60 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

The Government at last yielded and shortly after 
Okuma's secession an Imperial rescript appeared, in 
which the promise was given in the Emperor's name 
and under his sign manual that a national parlia- 
ment should be convened in 1890 "in order that 
the Imperial purpose of gradually establishing a 
constitutional form of Government might be carried 
out." All reason for further agitation was now gone. 
No one dared doubt the fulfilment of the Emperor's 
promise, but the hatred of the bureaucratic oligarchy 
whose power was still unlimited was not appeased. 
Outcries against it continued and had to be stifled 
with the same means of imprisonment, police sup- 
pression of public meetings, arbitrary suspension of 
newspapers, and expulsion of dangerous characters 
from the capital under drastic Peace Preservation 
Acts. A large number of the most prominent agi- 
tators sufiered imprisonment or expulsion, but the 
Government, undisturbed by all the uproar around 
it, calmly continued on its way. The reforms, 
initiated in 1871, for the material and social im- 
provement of the nation were steadily advanced and 
the national finances, which seemed at one time to 
presage inevitable bankruptcy, were rehabilitated 
and placed on a sound basis. Ito, who, after Okubo's 
death and Okuma's secession, was by far the ablest 
member of the Government, was sent to Europe to 
investigate the constitutional models which it afforded. 




fu^ 



^#Mfr »iP^ 



J/c 



/l-fJ^-^ 



Prince Ito 



v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 61 

and soon after his return the whole administrative 
system of the Government was changed and recast 
so as to resemble in some degree that of Great 
Britain. A cabinet was created consisting of ten 
ministers of state, nine of whom were chiefs of the 
principal executive departments with a Minister 
President or Prime Minister, who held no portfolio, 
at their head. All held their appointments solely 
at the will of the Emperor, were nominated by and 
directly responsible to him. The change was made 
so as to render the form of government more suitable 
to a country which was shortly to have parliamentary 
institutions, and, to prepare still further for these 
institutions, another step was taken which made a 
great change in social life. Ito had learned in 
Europe that a House of Peers was a necessary part 
of any parliamentary system and a peerage was 
created from which the House could be formed. 

The old nobility of Japan has been described in 
a previous chapter. None in any country in the 
world exceeds it either in the long, unbroken gene- 
alogy of its members or in the distinguished position 
they occupied in their country, whether as the retinue 
of the Imperial court or as great feudal lords who 
were quasi-sovereigns in their own domains. When 
the mediatisation of the fiefs was completed in 1871, 
the old individual titles of both court and feudal 
nobles were taken away and, as no new ones were 



62 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

given, they had no longer names or titles to distinguish 
them from their fellow subjects. This continued 
until the year 1884, when the Emperor established 
the "Five orders of Nobility," the titles of which 
were taken from China, and are translated as Prince, 
Marquis, Count, Viscount and Baron. All the heads 
of the old noble houses were included in one or other 
of these ranks according to their former degrees, but 
with them were associated many who, born simple 
samurai, merited the Emperor's recognition by their 
services to the state at or since the Restoration. 
Since its first creation, less than thirty years ago, 
the peerage has largely increased in numbers. The 
first list comprised 504 names. The present contains 
923, all the new creations being those of men who 
have distinguished themselves in the military or civil 
service of the Government, or as scientists, bankers 
or merchants, and no bar of birth or descent has 
been permitted to interfere with the social advance- 
ment of those who eminently merited it. Many 
commoners of plebeian descent, whose fathers were 
little better than abject serfs, are now peers. 

It was in 1884 that Ito returned from Europe. 
He was created a Count in the new peerage and 
nominated by the Emperor as the first Minister 
President under the new regime. Recurring com- 
plications with Korea and China were added to the 
domestic burthens of his office, but they did not 



v] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 63 

prevent him fi*om personally presiding over a com- 
mission which for the next five years was engaged 
in the framing of the new constitution. This task 
was completed and the constitution was promulgated 
in 1889 with impressive ceremonial and amidst uni- 
versal national rejoicing, and in the following year 
the first Parliament that was ever seen in any 
Oriental state was duly elected and met. 

The Parliament, or, to use its proper title, The 
Imperial Diet, consists of two Houses, a House of 
Peers of 300 members, who are partly hereditary, 
partly elective and partly nominated by the Emperor, 
and a House of Representatives, at first of 300 mem- 
bers but since increased to 379 members, elected for 
a maximum of four years on a high franchise. The 
House of Peers has always discharged with dignity 
its function of acting as a barrier against hasty or 
drastic reform and has never allowed any licence to 
tarnish its own proceedings, but it soon became 
evident that the lower House was to be made the 
instrument of a new and more persistent and violent 
agitation against the Government than that which 
had characterized the preceding two decades. The 
constitution was from the first a disappointment to 
those who had so strenuously fought for it. They 
had hoped to receive as their reward one founded on 
that of Great Britain. Instead of that they received 
one based on the model of Germany by which the 



64 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

cabinet is rendered independent of the Parliament 
and is responsible to and holds its office at the will 
of the Emperor alone. Considerable powers were 
at the same time conferred on the Parliament and 
great privileges secured to the people, but the pre- 
dominant feature in the constitution is the precise 
reservation of Imperial prerogatives that can be used 
at any time to delay or nullify the legislation of the 
Parliament. 

Numerous political parties had been founded 
during the antecedent decades of agitation, and 
when the House of Representatives first met no 
less than seven were represented among its mem- 
bers, all more or less antagonistic to each other, 
but all united in one common bond of opposition 
to the Government. Their object was to establish 
party government, with a ministry that must take 
its mandate from and owe its existence to their 
House, and the methods which they adopted to that 
end were those of rendering bureaucratic govern- 
ment impossible, of obstructing by every device 
that could be taken without distinct violation of 
the rules of the House all measures whether of 
finance or legislation that were brought before it 
by the Government. 

The Government, on its part, showed no disposi- 
tion to bend before either vituperation or obstruction. 
It, too, availed itself to the utmost of the principles 



V] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 65 

of the constitution that were in its favour. Suspen- 
sions and dissolutions of the House were frequent. 
There were no less than three dissolutions in less 
than four years. One occurred after a single session 
lasting only eighteen days, but when bitterness was 
at its very worst and it almost seemed as if the 
government could not be carried on, war broke out 
with China. In a moment, everything was changed. 
Patriotism united the people, high and low, when 
they had to face a foreign foe. All domestic dif- 
ferences were forgotten and, while the war lasted, 
supplies were cheerfully voted and not a murmur 
of opposition was heard, even from the most violent 
agitators, against any measure that was taken by the 
Government in the national interests. Nor did this 
spirit entirely die after the war was over. Some of 
the parties no longer invariably ranged themselves 
alongside the extremists and the Government was, 
in some of its most important measures, supported 
by a majority of the House, while purely factious 
opposition was confined to a steadily decreasing 
minority. But by none of the parties was the old 
aim, though its vigorous expression was suppressed 
in some, ever abandoned and the story of the long 
struggle which they maintained is in many of its 
aspects not a pleasant one. Throughout it has been 
one rather of persons than of principles. It has 
at times been tainted with open and shameless 



66 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

corruption and votes were, it was known, freely sold 
and bought, while the Government on its side re- 
warded those who supported it with subordinate 
appointments or with honours. 

It was not till 1900, after the House had been 
in existence for ten years, that a marked change 
occurred. Then Ito, who had been advanced to the 
dignity of a Marquis after the China war, the great 
Prime Minister, the creator of the constitution and 
of the Parliament, was induced to enter into the 
ranks of politicians and to become the head of a 
newly formed party which assumed the title of 
" Rikken Seiyukai," " Association of Friends of Con- 
stitutional Government," and the great influence 
and personal magnetism of its head soon enabled 
this party to obtain a commanding majority in the 
House. Its guiding principle is avowed to be not 
that of party government, for which the majority 
of its members had been strenuously fighting for 
ten years, but the conservation of the Imperial pre- 
rogative of nominating the ministry regardless of 
party while at the same time giving due consideration 
to the expressed will of the people. Some of its 
members entered the cabinet and from this time 
a political party became a distinct power in the 
executive. Its members gi-adually acquired a greater 
sense of their responsibility to the nation and sounder 
judgment in the exercise of their rights, and as they 



V] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT Q7 

did so they gained more and more the confidence of 
the people whom they represented. 

Among all parties the Seiyukai has retained 
the predominance which it acquired at its inception. 
Its founder and great leader has passed away, and 
has been succeeded by Marquis Saionji, the head of 
an old family of the Court nobility, a cadet branch 
of the Fujiwara, and as such the natural inheritor 
of the most ultra-conservative and aristocratic in- 
stincts. He had a comparatively long tenure of the 
Premiership, during the whole of which the Seiyukai 
was naturally the Government party, in close alliance 
with the elder statesmen (Genro) as they are called, 
the survivors of the great constructive statesmen and 
soldiers who took an active part in the Restoration 
and who created New Japan, as distinct from those 
who rose to eminence in later years. He again ac- 
cepted the Premiership in 1912 when his party held 
a commanding majority in the House. But this time 
his tenure of office was shoi-t. The avowed policy of 
himself and his party was that of national economy 
and retrenchment in the public services. He was 
at once met with a demand by his own Minister of 
War for two additional divisions of the Army (a 
mobilised division consists of about 18,000 men) for 
service in Korea, and when this demand was rejected, 
with the full approval of the leading representatives 
of business and finance, the Minister resigned and 

5—2 



68 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

no one could be found to take his place. The terms 
of the Constitution require that both the Ministers 
of War and of the Navy shall be members of the ser- 
vices, and the Government was in fact boycotted by 
all the senior officers of the army. The Premier, 
though at the head of an overwhelming majority in 
the House and confident of the approval of the 
country, was helpless and had no choice but to 
resign. 

He was succeeded by Prince Katsura, who had 
previously held the Premiership during some of the 
most eventful years in Japan's modern history, the 
years which witnessed the conclusion of the Anglo- 
Japanese alliance, the triumphant war with Russia, 
and an immense development of trade and industry, 
but which also witnessed an equally immense increase 
of national debt and taxation. Prince Katsura is 
a distinguished soldier as well as a statesman and 
an ex-samurai of the Choshiu clan, the members of 
which have held a supremacy in the army ever since 
its formation. He is also one of the elder statesmen, 
and as such a champion of bureaucracy and an 
inflexible opponent of any concession to party 
government. It seemed therefore as if his return 
to political leadership had secured a double triumph, 
one for the old system of bureaucracy as against 
political parties, and the other for the militarists, 
consisting almost exclusively of men of Choshiu origin, 



V] CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT 69 

as against both their colleagues in the execaitive and 
the nation in general. 

But Prince Katsura's tenure of the Premiership 
on this occasion was even shorter than that of his 
immediate predecessor and might be numbered by 
days rather than by months. A storm of opposition 
was aroused not only in the House but throughout 
the country. The Constitutionalists (Seiyukai) were 
firm and united and uncompromising in their deter- 
mination to refuse all sanction to the proposals of 
the military party. They were not only of themselves 
in an overwhelming majority in the House, quite 
sufiiciently so to be able to wreck any budget of which 
they disapproved, but were supported both by the 
sympathy and the active co-operation of members of 
other parties, and repeated suspensions of the session 
entirely failed to modify their attitude. Political 
mass meetings, held all over the country and attended 
by crowds, whose interest in politics had hitherto 
been dormant, enthusiastically endorsed what they 
had done and in not a few cases the meetings were 
followed by serious riots and by the mobbing of the 
few members of the House who were supporters of 
the Government. The bureaucratic Premier had to 
yield to the voice of the nation, and Prince Katsura 
resigned. 

He has been succeeded by Admiral Yamamoto, 
who has had a long official career as Minister of the 



70 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

Navy in many cabinets. He is not himself a member 
of the Seiyukai nor has he ever committed himself to 
any party in politics. But the members of his new 
cabinet are almost exclusively also members of the 
Seiyukai, and the cabinet may therefore be said to 
represent the principles of that party and its formation 
to herald the nearer approach of the time when the 
constitution will be interpreted or amended as they 
claim it should be. The Emperor will continue to 
be paramount but he must exercise his authority in 
accordance with the will of the nation as expressed 
by its chosen representatives and not solely by the 
advice of a small ring of statesmen of conservative 
prejudices, no matter how great their experience or 
how distinguished their past services. Prophecies 
are dangerous in any country, more so perhaps in 
Japan, where the unexpected has always happened, 
than in others, and they would be especially so if 
made as to the immediate future of domestic politics. 
Members of the Seiyukai were prominent in Ito's 
cabinet of 1900 and the party had then also a majority 
in the House. Then also it seemed as if the attain- 
ment of party government was within measurable 
view, but failure was the result and bureaucracy had 
a new lease of life. The political education of the 
people has, however, since made great progress, 
and the national apathy with which the first failure 
was received has changed into a vivid and almost 



VI] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 71 

universal excitement, which causes the problem of 
the future government of Japan to be one that is full 
of interest 



CHAPTER VI 

RECOVERY OF NATIONAL AUTONOMY 

Throughout the whole period during which the 
Government were struggling with their own people 
to resist the premature demand for parliamentary 
representation, they were at the same time engaged 
in a diplomatic struggle with Western Powers which 
taxed their ability, courage, and determination to no 
less a degree than did the first. 

The system of extra-territorial jurisdiction was 
introduced into all the original Treaties concluded be- 
tween the Government of the Shogun and the Western 
Powers. Under this system, foreigners residing in or 
visiting Japan were exempted from the jurisdiction 
of Japanese law and were answerable, both in civil 
and criminal matters, only to their own authorities, 
administering the laws of their own countries. The 
framers of the treaties in stipulating for it, only 
followed an invariable precedent in aU intercourse be- 
tween Western and Oriental nations, ever since the es- 
tablishment of the Ottoman Empire at Constantinople, 



n THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

one which is still jealously guarded in the case of 
every non-Christian country in the world except 
Japan. Even without these precedents, it would 
have been impossible to contemplate the subjection 
of Europeans to the jurisdiction of a nation whose 
laws were unknown but who, it was known, practised 
torture, persecuted Christians, and recognised no 
rights of personal freedom or security. The Shogun's 
ministers, on their side, were entirely ignorant of all 
principles of international law and custom and, un- 
conscious that they were placing their country on 
any lower level than those with which they were 
forming new relations, they willingly agreed to the 
surrender of their sovereign rights of judicial and 
tariff autonomy. 

In the first decade which elapsed after the con- 
clusion of the treaties, while the Shogunate was still 
in power, no attempt was made to alter the situation 
which was thus created. The internal condition of 
Japan and the complications with foreigners to which 
it gave rise were sufficient to absorb all the attention 
of the tottering Government without adding to its 
difficulties that of attempting to obtain any relaxation 
of the bonds that had been willingly signed. When 
the Emperor's Government came into office it had to 
assume all the obligations of these bonds and accept 
the situation which had been created by its prede- 
cessors. But, in the meantime, Japan had grown in 



VI] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 73 

knowledge and had learned both theoretically and 
by very bitter experience that the extra-territorial 
provisions of the treaties were a national stigma, 
derogatory to the prestige of a civilised and indepen- 
dent state. 

The disabilities imposed on her by the treaties 
were sufficiently glaring to justify her utmost dis- 
content. Identical treaties were made with no less 
than eighteen Western Powers, each one of which 
had its own system of consular jurisdiction and ad- 
ministered its own national laws, and only one among 
them all ever made provision for their full and 
effective administration. Great Britain, almost from 
the very first, established not only consular courts at 
every port at which foreigners were permitted to 
reside, presided over by highly-trained officers, 
qualified for the discharge of the important judicial 
duties that were entrusted to them and vested with 
very extensive powers of both civil and criminal 
jurisdiction, but founded a court of appeal in Japan 
and a still higher court at Shanghai, both of which 
exercised unlimited jurisdiction and were administered 
by judges whose professional ability and experience 
were unquestionable. The British Minister was also 
vested with legislative powers under the Sovereign's 
Orders in Council which enabled him at his discretion 
to give legal sanction, so as to make them enforceable 
in the local English courts, to any Japanese laws and 



74 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

ordinances that could equitably be applied to his 
countrymen. 

The case was very different with all other Powers. 
No other ministers were vested with the law-making 
prerogative of their British colleague. None could 
render Japanese ordinances enforceable on their 
countrymen, who might therefore violate with im- 
punity regulations, such as those of quarantine, which 
were essential for the general welfare of Japanese 
and foreigners alike. The consuls of most were 
trading consuls, quite incompetent to exercise judicial 
functions, not always honest in the exercise of such 
capacity as they possessed, and even consuls de carrier e 
were very limited in the extent of the jurisdiction 
that was conferred on them by their own governments, 
so that capital and other serious offences committed 
by their countrymen generally went entirely un- 
punished. There were no courts of appeal nearer 
than Leipzig, Paris or Washington, which were 
entirely inaccessible to Japanese prosecutors or 
plaintiffs, and gross miscarriages of justice in serious 
cases, even when facts and law were entirely beyond 
dispute, were the rule rather than the exception. 

Very early in its career the Emperor's Govern- 
ment attempted to procure a revision of the treaty 
clauses which they felt inflicted so great a wrong on 
their country. In 1871, a great embassy was sent to 
Europe for the purpose, but as was natural it totally 



VI] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 75 

failed in its object. The laws and system of punish- 
ment in Japan, though greatly modified from what 
they had been when the treaties were made, were 
still founded on the old Chinese models and entirely 
inapplicable to Europeans. Torture was still prac- 
tised. Not only was the offensive prohibition of 
Christianity still in public existence, but native 
Christians were actually being cruelly persecuted at 
the time when the Embassy was on its mission. The 
chief result that ensued from it was the enforcement 
of the lesson on Japan that there was no prospect of 
the realisation of her desire until she reformed her 
legal system and penal codes on European standards. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that the recovery 
of the full national rights with which she had parted 
in her ignorance was the motive which mainly in- 
spired all Japan's great reforms. It was that which 
urged her to reform her legal system ; to mthdraw 
the prohibition of Christianity and make all religion 
free ; to raise the material and educational status 
of her people to the level of the most enlightened 
nations of the West, so that their claim might be- 
come morally unanswerable ; and to develop her 
great military system so that her claim, if refused 
on moral grounds, might be backed by force. 

Long years of wearisome diplomatic negotiations 
passed away and Japan had given the most ample 
evidence of her own advance in all the elements of 



n THE EV0LUTI0:N^ of new japan [ch. 

internal civilisation before her aspirations were at 
last realised. At first the negotiations were carried 
on in Tokio, where two conferences were held, the 
first in 1882 and the second in 1886, between the 
Minister for Foreign Afiairs and the assembled 
Diplomatic Representatives of all the Treaty Powers. 
Under the treaties, foreigners enjoyed the rights to 
reside and trade only at certain cities on the coast, 
specified in the treaties and known as the open 
ports, and in Tokio ; but from the middle of the 
seventies they had also been i)ermitted as a privilege 
to travel in the interior for fjurposes of health or 
pleasure. This concession, it may be remarked, 
speedily became the source of very considerable gain 
to Japan from the money spent both by residents 
and travellers, which steadily increased with the 
development of travelling facilities and of the know- 
ledge of all the great natural beauties of the country. 
The opening up of the whole country to both trade 
and residence was off*ered in return for the abolition 
of the objectionable clauses in the treaties, but 
even this concession, with all its possible commercial 
advantages, was not sufficient to overcome the re- 
luctance of Great Britain to submit her citizens to 
the jurisdiction of laws that were neither as yet 
tolerable in themselves nor furnished with complete 
machinery for their administration. 

The difficulties which the Japanese negotiators 



VI] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 11 

had to overcome were enough to dishearten the most 
optimistic among them. They had to deal with the 
representatives of eighteen Powers, all of whom were 
of equal rank, all with equal rights to a hearing, so 
that the British representative, with the duty of safe- 
guarding immense commercial and shipping interests 
and the persons and property of a large resident 
British population, surpassing at that time in both 
cases the aggregate of those of all other nationalities 
in Japan, had only the same voting power in the 
conferences as the representatives of Austria and 
Spain, who had neither trade nor citizens to protect, 
or of such insignificant Powers as Portugal and 
Belgium, whose captiousness was not infrequently in 
inverse ratio to their legitimate influence. All the 
treaties contained "most favoured nation" clauses 
which entitled all the Powers to claim any special 
concessions that were made to any one without sub- 
mitting to the conditions that accompanied them. 
All the Powers were supposed to be acting in har- 
mony, but their representatives had each different 
axes to gi'ind. Russia's interests in Japan were 
entirely political and she cared nothing for trade 
nor for the protection of European residents in 
Japan among whom few of her own subjects were 
included. Great Britain carried on a great import 
trade and it was her object to prevent that trade 
from being burthened Avith oppressive duties. The 



78 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [oh. 

United States on the other hand, though the largest 
purchaser of Japan's exports, had then practically no 
import trade and were therefore able, without any 
cost to themselves, to give full indulgence to a 
sentimental friendship and their warmest support 
to Japan's claim to omplete tariff autonomy. And 
similar differences were apparent in the cases of all 
the other great Powers, while as to the smaller, 
with no material interests whatsoever, without either 
moral influence or any pretence of military strength, 
it was within the prerogative of any one to render 
nugatory formal concessions even if they were unani- 
mously made by all the others. 

When further progi^ess had been made in legal 
reform, Great Britain withdrew in some degree from 
the rigid attitude she had hitherto preserved, and 
in conjunction with Germany and the United States 
gave a modified acceptance to the Japanese pro- 
posals. But then a new difficulty arose. The political 
intelligence of the people had advanced in ratio with 
their material progress. The press had grown in 
influence and ability, and it was now openly declared 
by the people and in the press that no half measures 
could be tolerated and that no revision of the treaties 
could be accepted that was limited with conventional 
restrictions of any kind, or that failed to confer on 
Japan the fullest rights of an independent and civi- 
lised nation. A violent agitation spread throughout 



VI] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 79 

the whole country and it was accompanied by a 
dangerous outbreak of anti-foreign prejudice, one 
incident in which was the attempted assassination of 
the present Czar of Russia, who as Czarewitch was 
then visiting Japan. An attempt was also made to 
assassinate Count Okuma, at that time Minister for 
Foreign Affairs, and when the first Parliament met 
under the new constitution, its members were no less 
persistent and outspoken than their constituents in 
urging upon the Government its duty to obtain, 
without further procrastination, the realisation of 
the national aspirations in their widest sense. 

Nearly twenty years had elapsed since Japan had 
made her first essay towards procuring a revision 
of the obnoxious Treaties and she seemed at this 
juncture, notwithstanding all the evidence she had 
given of material progi*ess and of her desire to har- 
monize her institutions with those of the West, to 
be no nearer the end than she had been at first. 
European residents in Japan of nearly all nation- 
alities still contemplated with the strongest aversion 
their unconditional subjection to the jurisdiction of 
the native judicial and executive oificials and were 
strong enough to bring pressure that could not be 
ignored to bear on their Diplomatic Representatives 
on the spot. And the Japanese people were still 
more adamant in their insistence that no revision 
which was not entirely unconditional would solace 



80 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

their long-outraged national dignity or be in keeping 
with the terms of the constitution they had just 
obtained. Then, when matters were at their very 
worst and a hopeless impasse seemed to have been 
reached, the Japanese Ministers gave one more proof 
of the marked diplomatic talent which they had 
already displayed on several occasions in inter- 
national aifairs and have since so frequently testified 
both in war and peace. 

They suddenly terminated all discussion in Tokio, 
disregarded the representatives of the Powers with 
whom they had so long been vainly arguing, and 
transferred all their activities to Europe where they 
dealt not with the Powers in conference but with 
each separately and under the pledge of secrecy. 
Great Britain was still the Power whose consent it 
was most important to win, though she no longer 
held the predominant moral, commercial or military 
prestige in the Far East which she did throughout 
the earlier negotiations. Both Germany and the 
United States were now beginning to show them- 
selves as commercial rivals and to display their 
naval flags where they had been seldom seen before. 
Sir Harry Parkes, the masterful minister of long 
Eastern experience, had gone and had been followed 
by successors who had neither experience nor know- 
ledge of Japan, and whose last idea in their own 
interests was to criticise or oppose any steps that 




Sir Harry S. Parkes 



VI] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 81 

might be taken by the Department at home under 
which they served and which would be the arbiter 
of their future careers. In the Foreign Office in 
London, the astute Japanese Minister accredited to 
Great Britain had an easy task. Its officials, both 
ignorant and badly advised as to the interests they 
were sacrificing, yielded to all his proposals and on 
July 18, 1894, a treaty was signed in London which 
unconditionally conceded everything that was neces- 
sary to realise the most extravagant Japanese claims. 
The other Powers gradually, though in some instances 
slowly and reluctantly, followed Great Britain's ex- 
ample, not however without securing as a quid pro 
quo some slight concessions for the benefit of their 
trade and countrymen in Japan to which the British 
Foreign Office had been loftily indiflerent, and on 
June 30, 1899, the operation of all the old treaties 
came simultaneously to an end and for the first time 
in history, large, rich, and intelligent European com- 
munities became subject to the unfettered jurisdiction 
of an Oriental and non- Christian Power. 

It was naturally a day of universal rejoicing 
throughout Japan, even more so than that of the 
promulgation of the constitution. The ambition per- 
sistently cherished and fought for throughout more 
than a quarter of a century had at last been attained 
and Japan had won her entry on terms of abso- 
lute equality into the comity of nations. European 

L. 6 



82 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

residents in Japan looked, however, to the future 
with profound misgivings. They thought that their 
personal liberty, hitherto securely guarded by their 
own authorities, was endangered, that their trade 
was threatened with ruin, and that their lives would 
become intolerable under the petty persecutions to 
which they would be always liable at the hands of 
the lower classes of the Japanese officials. Their ex- 
perience as plaintiffs or prosecutors in the Japanese 
civil and criminal courts filled them with dismay 
when they thought of what it would be when they 
were forced to appear in the roles of defendants or 
accused. Hitherto they had been immune from 
taxation ; they would henceforth be liable to what- 
ever burthens a parliament, in which they were 
entirely unrepresented, whose members bore them 
no goodwill, might impose on them. The feel- 
ings with which they contemplated the new order 
of affairs to which they would thenceforward have 
to bow their heads, may be aptly compared to those 
of the most implacable Ulster Orangeman, when he 
thinks of his future under Home Rule, with the 
single exception that they anticipated none of the 
interference with their religion on the part of heathen 
governors of another race which the Orangeman 
professes to dread from his Roman Catholic fellow- 
countrymen. The voteless British residents in Japan 
had no one to voice their grievances in Parliament, 



VI] NATIONAL AUTONOMY 83 

and the new conditions, harsh though they seemed, 
had to be accepted. When that was recognised, all 
the European communities at once united as practical 
business men to make the best of what was irretriev- 
able and they were aided in doing so by a new spirit 
which developed itself among the Japanese. 

All lingering traces of the old anti-foreign pre- 
judices seemed to disappear at once. That this was 
so was primarily due to the Emperor who issued a 
special rescript to his people, declaring : — 

his earnest wish that all his subjects should unite with one heart to 
associate cordially with the people from far countries and that his 
officials of all classes should observe the utmost circumspection in the 
discharge of their duties, so that Japanese and Foreigners might 
enjoy equal privileges and advantages. 

The Emperor's wishes are received by his subjects 
as divine commands, and as such they were now un- 
reservedly obeyed. The instances in which Japanese 
officials have made arbitrary or unjust use of the 
powers with which they are now vested have been 
of rare occurrence, and few of the forebodings of the 
Europeans have been realised, natural as they were 
at the time. They have had to submit to regulations, 
many of which are inconsistent with their conceptions 
of personal freedom, to heavy personal taxation, to 
oppressive duties on their trade, and in some in- 
stances to inequitable decisions in the local courts 
of justice. But their trade, so far from being ruined, 

6—2 



84 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

has more than doubled in its volume if not in its 
profits, and they have enjoyed a greater degree of 
personal liberty and of security of life and property 
than is accorded to foreigners in many Christian 
countries. Japan has not shown herself to be un- 
worthy of the trust that has been reposed in her, 
hazardous as it was thought by the most com- 
petent authorities to be at the time at which it was 
conferred. 



CHAPTER Vn 

TRADE AND INDUSTRY 

It was in 1858 that the first European traders 
began to take up their residences at Yokohama, then 
a mere fishing village but the nearest available port 
to the Shogun's capital, and that Japan became 
open to the commerce of the world. 

The story of the beginning of her commercial 
intercourse is not a pleasant one to recall. The 
earliest foreign traders, like the Dutch at Desima 
during the years of Japan's seclusion, acquired very 
large profits principally owing to the diiferences in 
the relative values of gold and silver in Japan and 
in the rest of the world. In Japan the ratio was as 
one to four, and in the rest of the world one to fifteen, 



VII] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 85 

and a silver dollar obtainable for 4^. 6d. in China, 
distant only a few days' steaming, could in Japan be 
exchanged into a gold token that was worth over 
eighteen shillings in all the rest of the world. Trade 
conducted under such conditions was in itself suffi- 
ciently profitable to dazzle the most extreme optimism, 
but still greater profits were to be obtained from 
dealings in the currency itself witliout even a pretence 
of trade. Gold was exported in such quantities as to 
threaten the country with the denudation of its whole 
supply, and when the only possible remedy was taken 
in altering the relative values in Japan, all internal 
finance and economy were completely dislocated. 
Prices rose to a degree hitherto undreamt of, and 
the only persons to profit by the rise were the pro- 
ducers of silk, tea and vegetable wax, the only 
commodities to appear among Japan's original ex- 
ports, while the rest of the people suflbred intense 
distress. 

Trade had always been despised, always regarded 
as the lowest in the scale of honour of all human 
vocations. It is not to be wondered at that their first 
modern experience of its conduct with the outward 
world should have tended not only to intensify the 
contempt previously felt for it by the Japanese, but 
to add hatred almost for its very name. It brought 
nothing to them that they wanted, except firearms, 
which were used during the succeeding years in 



86 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

slaughtering each other, while it enormously enhanced 
the cost of their own products that were in most 
general consumption. 

Throughout the remaining years of the Shogunate, 
after the original difficulties of the currency had been 
overcome, trade continued to be hampered by vexa- 
tious difficulties and restrictions. That carried on 
with the Dutch had been always subject to the 
strictest Government control, and though the new 
treaties provided that it should be entirely free in 
this sense, old customs could not be eradicated in a 
day and it was still subject to constant official inter- 
ference. The foreign merchants and the Japanese 
dealers were ignorant of each other's languages and 
customs, and of the values of what each had to sell. 
Both were full of mistrust, and, owing to the national 
odium which rested on all trade, only a very low 
class of Japanese, outcasts of their own people, with- 
out capital or sense of honour, at first entered upon 
that which was foreign. Their dishonesty and trickery 
brought upon their class an unsavoury reputation 
which still clings to their present-day representa- 
tives, some of whom, now millionaires, are the direct 
descendants of the early pioneers. On the other side, 
there were not wanting among the foreigners many 
who took advantage of their native clients' ignorance 
and inexperience to carry out transactions that could 
only be characterised as shameful frauds. 



VII] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 87 

Notwithstanding all its difficulties, trade ad- 
vanced even under the Shogunate, and in the first 
year of Meiji was estimated to have reached a value 
of about seven millions sterling. The Japanese had 
by this time learned to appreciate the quality and 
cheapness of English cottons and bought them largely, 
though firearms and old and obsolete steamers most 
appealed to them among all that Europeans could 
supply. The value of their ex^jorts was then very con- 
siderably in excess of that of the imports. During 
the sixties the silk husbandry of France and Italy 
was brought to the verge of ruin by an epidemic of 
pebrine plague in the silkworms. The worms died in 
multitudes, and the cocoons of those that survived 
furnished only a fraction of the normal quantity of 
silk. It was at this time that the raw silk of Japan 
became known in Europe, and its excellent quality 
immediately caused it to be in such demand that, in 
1868, the value of its export was nearly three millions 
sterling. Japan might then have laid the foundation 
of a trade which would ultimately have given her the 
command of all the silk markets of the world. But 
French and Italian graineurs, while eager to buy her 
raw silk, were still more eager to buy the eggs of her 
healthy silkworms in order to replenish their own 
exhausted stock, and the prices which, during a few 
years, they were willing to pay for them tempted the 
native farmers, who were incapable of looking to the 



88 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

future, to devote themselves to the rearing of silk- 
worms for the sake of their eggs rather than to the 
production of silk. The best eggs were sold and ex- 
ported to Europe, where by their means the plague- 
stricken industry was soon recuperated, while that in 
Japan, where only inferior eggs with diminished pro- 
ductive power had been left, for a time declined. 
The Japanese farmer had killed the geese which laid 
the golden eggs. When a healthy race of worms 
could again be reared in Europe, he found that there 
was no further demand for his eggs ; his raw silk had 
lost much of its original excellence, and he had a 
long struggle before he was able to repair the dam- 
age which he suffered from his own short-sighted 
greed. Tea was the export that was next in value 
to silk and silkworm's eggs. Its peculiar flavour 
commended it to the American taste and, from the 
first, it found a market there which it retains to the 
present. These three staples represented nine-tenths 
of the whole export trade of the year. Some copper 
and vegetable wax were also exported, but the only 
articles to which the term "manufactures" could 
possibly be extended were curios of porcelain, bronze 
or lacquer ware, and their whole value did not exceed 
£50,000. 

The Imperial Government was in its early years 
too absorbed in both domestic and foreign politics 
to be able to give much attention to the direct 



VII] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 89 

encouragement of trade and industry, and Japanese 
traders were too deficient in enterprise and self- 
reliance, to venture, unled and unaided, into new 
spheres except in the most timorous and tentative 
fashion. The national finances, too, were in a state 
of utter disorganisation. A mint, under the manage- 
ment of English experts of high standing, was founded 
and the coins which issued from it were unim- 
peachable in quality and appearance, but from 1869 
onwards till 1881 the balance of foreign trade was 
steadily against Japan with the exception only of 
1876, when exceptional circumstances for once turned 
it the other way. The coins issued from the mint 
went abroad to pay for the balance, and the only 
currency in domestic circulation was paper. 

The new Government was, from the first, hampered 
by serious financial embarrassments. It succeeded 
to an empty treasury and while, in its early years, 
its expenditure was large, its revenue was collected 
slowly and with difficulty, and the only method that 
could be found of discharging its liabilities was by 
the issue of inconvertible paper notes. Recurring 
annual deficits in the budgets necessitated continuous 
increases in these issues, and an equally continuous 
depreciation in their exchange value for specie natur- 
ally followed, until the climax was reached shortly 
after the suppression of the Satsuma rebellion, the 
cost of which had been defrayed by a further large 



90 THE EVOLUTIOISr OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

issue of paper, when the inconvertible notes fell to 
a discount of over 80 per cent. Specie continued to 
flow out of the country. Within it, there was an 
abnormal appreciation of prices and ^ates of interest, 
and the most competent European authorities be- 
lieved it was on the verge of national bankruptcy. 
In such circumstances, the wonder is rather that 
trade showed any increase at all — its value nearly 
doubled in the i^eriod of twelve years — than that it 
did not develop with the leaps and "bounds that we 
grew accustomed, in later years, to associate with 
Japan's commercial progress. For the progress which 
it did make at that time Japan is entirely indebted 
to the resident European merchants, among whom 
those of British nationality were far predominant, 
whose honesty, capacity and enterprise remedied, 
vis-a-vis buyers and consumers in Europe, the de- 
ficiencies that were universally characteristic of the 
native traders. In 1882, the Government woke up 
to the necessity of drastic financial reform. European 
expert advisers had suggested various remedies, in- 
cluding foreign loans and national lotteries. But 
a foreign loan could only have been obtained at very 
high interest and some reliable item of the revenue 
must have been earmarked to meet it, while gam- 
bling, in any shape or form, has in all ages been 
forbidden by Japanese law. The Government had 
to rely on its own efibrts to get Japan out of the 



VII] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 91 

financial morass into which she had been driven by 
her early necessities. 

Sweeping economies were efiected in the public 
expenditure and simultaneously a substantial increase 
was made in taxation. Industrial and agricultural 
undertakings which had been established during the 
preceding decade, with the double purpose of afford- 
ing educational models to the people and bringing 
some revenue to the Government, were sold. By 
these means a large surplus was obtained in the 
annual budget which was applied to the redemption 
of the paper currency in circulation. Then the 
Government itself practically became a trader. Two 
Banks were established under its auspices, the Bank 
of Japan, to act as the agent of the Government in 
its domestic finlhces, and the Yokohama Specie 
Bank, to serve in a similar capacity in its foreign 
financial afiairs. Native produce was bought through 
the first and paid for with paper and sold abroad 
through the second for specie which was collected 
and stored in the Treasury. The balance of trade 
now turned in favour of Japan, and during the three 
years 1882 — 1884 there was a surplus of exports 
over imports of more than 20 million yen, so that the 
Government measures were considerably facilitated. 
Their result was that soon after the close of the year 
last mentioned, the i)aper currency in circulation 
was reduced by 80 million yen, and the Government 



92 THE EVOLUTION OF :N^EW JAPAN [ch. 

had at its disposal a specie reserve of 42 million 
yen. Confidence was restored. The currency, which, 
in 1882, was at a discount of eighty per cent, was 
early in 1885 almost at par, and in the autumn of 
the same year the Government was able to announce, 
that the hitherto purely fiduciary paper would be 
exchanged at the Bank of Japan for its face value 
in specie. 

It was in 1885 that Japan, in the confidence 
engendered by the restoration of her financial sta- 
bility, began to furnish omens of her coming com- 
mercial and industrial progress. The value of her 
foreign trade in 1874, when her customs service had 
been thoroughly organised and its statistics had 
become unimpeachable, was 42 million yen. In 1884, 
the value had only grown to 53 Thillion yen. Ten 
years later it was 230 million yen, and in yet another 
decade (1904) it had reached 690 million yen. Its 
movement was still onwards, and in 1912 its value 
amounted to 1145 million yen. The population of 
the Empire also largely increased. In 1884, it was 
37 J million, and in 1912 it was estimated at 52^ 
million, exclusive of Formosa and Korea. In 1884, 
the ratio of the value of her foreign trade to the 
population was 1*67 yen per head ; in 1894, 5*52 yen; 
in 1904, 14-63 yen, and in 1911, 18-65 yen. 

In 1884, Japan's exports were still confined to 
agricultural, mining and marine products — silk, tea. 



VII] TRADE AXD INDUSTRY 93 

coal, copper and dried fish. The only manufactured 
articles included amongst them, to any substantial 
extent, were matches, an industry acquired from the 
West, and such indigenous products as porcelain, 
lacquer and bronze ware, and plaited straw ware. 
The cotton spinning industry had been initiated and 
raw cotton was imported for its requirements, but 
with that exception almost all the imports were highly 
finished manufactures. It was already recognised, 
however, by her statesmen that her future industrial , 
prosperity depended rather on the development of 
her manufacturing than of her agi'icultural industry. 
The capacity of the latter had its limits, and while it 
would no doubt remain, as it had always been, the 
greatest of all national industries, there was no hope, 
even with the intensive system of culture that was 
universally followed throughout the whole country, of 
its being able to provide for the future support of 
a population increasing with such rapidity as was 
that of Japan, where it was foreseen that the time 
was within measurable view when 100 million people 
would have to be supported, and that too in a land 
which in the past had on many occasions in years of 
dearth been unable to provide the absolute neces- 
saries of life for less than a third of that number. 
The intelligence, docility and deftness, which the 
people possessed in an eminent degree, must be 
directed into new channels of industrial skill and 



94 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

activity, and Japan made in the progress of time the 
workshop of the Far East, just as Great Britain was 
of the West. 

Every natural advantage existed to aid in the 
attainment of this end. Japan not only possessed, 
like Great Britain, an ample supply of coal, but had 
also at her disposal what Great Britain had not, an 
immense water-power in her lakes at high altitudes 
and her rapidly-flowing rivers. Her coasts were 
everywhere indented by capacious harbours, and 
close to her was the great Empire of China, with 
whose people she had many common ties, whose 
tastes and requirements she had opportunities and 
means of studying that were wholly lacking in Euro- 
pean competitors for her great markets. To acquire 
a control, in the first instance, of the foreign trade of 
China and subsequently to extend her commercial 
activity even as far as India was an ambition that 
presented itself to Japanese statesmen as one that 
was not beyond the capacity of their people to realise 
in the process of time. 

No measure that could train and stimulate the 
people to that end was neglected. A department of 
Agriculture and Commerce was organised in the 
Government and the best ofiicials and experts were 
employed in it. Commercial and technical training 
schools were established throughout the Empire. 
Liberal subsidies were granted to infant industries, 



VII] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 95 

and the press and the platform were freely used both 
for teaching and encouragement. Banks, both for 
general and specific business, were founded so that 
credit facilities at moderate interest could be obtained, 
and they have had careers of almost unbroken success. 
The two great wars in which Japan was engaged and 
the Anglo-Japanese alliance had each their efiect in 
l^romoting commercial prosperity. The indemnity 
that was obtained from the war with China was in 
part used to foster commercial activity and to esta- 
blish her currency, hitherto of silver, on a gold 
standard. The enhanced national prestige which she 
acquired as the result of the war with Russia and of 
the alliance with Great Britain enabled her to become 
a borrower on moderate terms in the money markets 
of Europe, so that the heavy burthen thrown upon the 
nation by the cost of the war with Russia was met 
without a particle of financial disorganisation or 
distress. 

One great obstacle to ultimate success was the 
insufficiency of internal transport facilities. This 
was overcome by the steady advance of railway con- 
struction until every district in the country was 
within easy reach of a line, and it became possible to 
travel from the extreme north to the extreme south 
of the Empire without leaving a station, except to 
cross the straits that separate Hokkaido, the northern, 
from Hondo, the main island, and Hondo from 



96 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

Kiusiu. It was in 1873 that the first railway was 
opened to the public, a line of less than 20 miles 
between Yokohama and Tokio. In 1911, there were 
no less than 5355 miles in operation, all the property 
of the state. A great mercantile marine was also 
fostered by large subsidies both for the construction 
and navigation of ocean-going steamers of the highest 
class, not only for service in Eastern waters, but to 
carry the mercantile flag to the west coast of America, 
to India, Australia and England, and liners, managed 
with no less efficiency than those of the best known 
steamship companies of Great Britain, now regularly 
ply between the ports of those countries and of Japan 
and successfully carry on a large passenger and cargo 
trade. 

The people have responded to the efibrts of their 
Government. From the time that they could rely on 
the stability of their currency, they have shown a 
spirit of enterprise that was previously, with every 
reason that was founded on experience, believed to 
be entirely wanting in them. Numerous joint-stock 
companies for industrial purposes have been founded 
with ample capital, and have contributed much to the 
development of the spinning, Aveaving, engineering 
and ship-building industries. The working classes, 
among whom, as in England, there has been a large 
influx from the country to the towns, have adapted 
themselves to the new conditions of organised labour 



VII] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 97 

in large establishments, — all industry in Japan in 
former days was entirely domestic, carried on in a 
small way in separate households by members of the 
same family — and the descendants of the samurai, 
whose fathers despised the very name of trade and 
thought the smallest association with it contamina- 
tion, now eagerly seek for employment in banks, in 
merchant houses and in factories, where they often 
serve under the orders of and are paid by commoners, 
whom their fathers would scarcely have deigned to 
admit to their presence, and where their higher ideals 
of probity in some degree remedy the lack of in- 
tegrity which is still a i)rominent characteristic among 
those who have been born into the manufacturing and 
commercial classes. 

Japan, which forty years ago could in one year 
only send abroad manufactured goods in the shape 
of a few articles de luxe to the value of less than 
£50,000, exported in eleven months of the year 1912, 
partly manufactured goods to the value of 23^ millions 
sterling and wholly manufactured to the value of 
14 J millions. They included cotton yarn, cotton 
and silk piece goods and handkerchiefs, clothing, 
umbrellas, matches, refined sugar, paper, floor matting, 
carpets, straw plaiting and cigarettes, and, to a minor 
extent, machinery, electric fittings, stoves, bicycles, 
boots, saddlery, trunks, cement, soap, tooth powder 
and brushes, chemicals, beer, mineral waters, clocks, 

L. 7 



98 THE EVOLUTION^ OF NEW JAPAN [cii. 

lamps, stationery, glass ware and a hundred other 
miscellaneous articles, all of which she has learned to 
make from Europe and all of which find a ready 
market in China and in the Straits Settlements, where 
they are sold at prices with which even German 
makers cannot compete. The import of raw material 
and of machinery has kept pace with the development 
of manufacturing industry, and though a heavy pro- 
tective tariff has now replaced the conventional 
tariffs of her early days of commercial intercourse 
with foreign countries, under which only an average 
ad valorem duty of 5 per cent, was levied on all im- 
ports, she bought over twenty million pounds worth 
of goods from Europe in 1912, nine-tenths of which 
may be said to have been fully manufactured. Great 
Britain no longer enjoys her former monopoly of this 
trade, but the value of British products is still two- 
fold that of the products of Germany, her greatest 
competitor, and if the purchases that Japan makes 
from the overseas dominions are added to those made 
from the parent country, the import trade of the 
British Empire to Japan represents more than 40 per 
cent, of the whole trade. 

The present industrial position of Japan is, how- 
ever, not all couleiir de rose nor is its future so well 
defined as to place the realisation of the hopes of its 
founders beyond the realms of doubt. One of her 
early advantages was the abundance of cheap and 



VII] TRADE AND INDUSTRY 99 

docile labour that was at her command. Labour is 
no longer either so cheap or so contented to take 
what it is offered as it was. The standards of life 
have risen and what the fathers of the present 
workmen regarded as luxuries are now demanded by 
their sons as common necessaries. Wages have, in 
thirty years, increased three-fold, and if the relative 
productive capacity of the Japanese workman is fairly 
compared with that of his English confrere, it may 
be doubted if there is now a very marked difference 
between the cost of labour in Japan and in England. 
It is still cheaper, probably less than half, but its 
quality is still far inferior and in factories the 
aggregate of employees is still fully three-fold of 
what would be considered necessary for the same 
work in England. The old docility is no longer 
a conspicuous element among the working classes. 
They are still unorganised and have no trades unions 
or combinations for the protection and advancement 
of their class interests, but the men have learned 
something of the rights of labour, and the craven 
humility which feudal oppression engendered in them 
has been replaced to no small extent by truculent 
and offensive aggressiveness and by an intolerance of 
any discipline other than that of the drill sergeant 
during the period of military service. No ideas of 
personal loyalty now bind them to their employers, 
and socialism is not without its apostles though as 

7—2 



100 THE EYOLUTIOISr OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

yet it has found few disciples. Wages have risen, 
but the cost of living following on more requirements, 
far higher prices even of the necessaries of life, and 
a heavy burthen of imperial and local taxation, has 
done so to a still greater degree. Workmen in Japan 
have not yet votes and have therefore no political 
influence. The benevolence of the legislature has as 
yet failed to benefit them either by factory acts 
regulating their hours of labour, or by Insurance or 
Compensation acts, and while feeling themselves the 
increasing strain of the struggle for life, they see 
very substantial dividends regularly paid by the 
companies they serve to rich and comfortable share- 
holders. The spirit already present and growing in 
them is not such as will induce them to submit 
indefinitely to this condition of aflairs and the day 
may not be very far distant when the conflict between 
capital, though supported by a sympathetic legisla- 
ture, and labour, though politically powerless, may 
assume some of the aspects which it already presents 
in Europe. 

CHAPTER Vni 

FOREIGN RELATIONS. 1867 — 1895 

If the questions of Treaty Revision and Trade 
are excluded, Japan's Foreign Relations, from the 
Restoration down to the close of the Russian War, 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 101 

may be said to have been confined to her three 
nearest neighbours, China, Russia and Korea, and 
the last named was the pivot on which the most 
important controversies depended which she had 
with the other two. 

From the dark ages in which Japan, under the 
leadership of her mythical Empress Jingo, claimed to 
have conquered Korea, the latter acknowledged the 
suzerainty of her conqueror in the usual Oriental 
fashion by the payment of annual tribute. The 
custom was at no period observed with absolute 
regularity and it fell into total abeyance in the 
anarchy that prevailed throughout Japan during the 
long civil wars of the middle ages, but it was revived 
at the beginning of the seventeenth century subse- 
quent to Korea's second invasion and conquest by 
Hideyoshi, the great military dictator of Japan, and 
it thenceforward continued to be regularly observed 
throughout the whole of the Tokugawa regime. 
" Payment of tribute," it may be mentioned, was only 
in form. It did not involve the transfer of any sums 
of money, and was signified by the despatch of a 
mission to the superior Power bearing certain specified 
offerings of no great value. On the occasions of 
Lord Macartney's mission to China in 1793 and of 
Lord Amherst's in 1816 as ambassadors of George III, 
the usual complimentary presents which they offered 
to the Emperor were described in the Chinese official 



102 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

gazette as "tribute," and the ambassadors themselves 
as tribute bearers to a superior Power. 

Throughout all time, Korea, while thus outwardly 
acknowledging herself as a tributary of Japan, also 
not only admitted herself but claimed to be the 
vassal of China, to which she was bound by ties of 
gratitude, reverence and propinquity which had no 
existence in her relations with Japan. So far from 
that, the memories of all the sufferings she had 
undergone during Hideyoshi's ruthless invasion and 
of the national ruin which followed it, made the very 
name of Japan an object of bitter hatred to all her 
people, high and low. Korea also conserved her 
national isolation, even more rigidly than Japan had 
done prior to Perry's arrival. Her sole connections 
with the outward world were with Japan and China 
and all attempts by Europeans to enter the country 
were repulsed. The few French missionaries, who 
secretly made their way there, and all their converts 
were cruelly tortured and killed, and even the use of 
European goods was forbidden under pain of death. 
So conservative were the court and officials that they 
adhered to the dress and customs which they had 
adopted from China when under the Ming dynasty 
(1368 — 1644) and made no change in them throughout 
all the succeeding years in which they professed to 
be the obedient vassals of the Manchu Emperors. 

After the Restoration, Japan sent letters to the 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 103 

Korean Court informing it of the change of govern- 
ment. The letters were answered with contemptuous 
insult and the overtures of friendship which they 
contained were haughtily rejected. When, in 1873, 
this fact became public in Japan, the whole nation 
was in a ferment of indignation and angrily demanded 
that war should at once be declared. War with 
Korea would, however, almost certainly have ulti- 
mately involved war also with China, a task for which 
Japan was quite unfitted, and the Emperor, young 
as he then was, showed his wisdom and prudence by 
supporting the members of his ministry who had the 
courage to resist both the national outcry and their 
OAvn colleagues in sympathy with it. Then occurred 
the first split in the Ministry, involving the resigna- 
tions among other ministers of Itagaki and Saigo, 
but peace was preserved and the country permitted 
to continue without foreign complication in its great 
tasks of domestic reform and reorganisation. 

Japan was, however, only biding her time. She 
did not forget Korea's insult. She also fully re- 
cognised the danger to her own territorial integrity, 
perhaps even to her continued independent ex- 
istence, if Russia, then in her full career of Asiatic 
expansion, took possession of Korea, whose north- 
eastern boundaries were already conterminous with 
those of Russia's Far Eastern province of Primorski 
on the Pacific littoral. Korea, in her national 



104 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

ignorance and debility, consequent on her long 
seclusion from the outer world, could make no 
resistance against a great European military Power, 
while the magnificent ice-free harbours on her southern 
coast provided a bait for Russia that would in time 
prove irresistible. Japan resolved to take upon 
herself the mission, which the United States had 
accomplished in her own case, of dragging Korea out 
of her isolation, hoping thereby both to bring her 
into the sphere of international intercourse and to 
induce her to shake off the fetters of her effete Chinese 
civilisation and educate herself in Western science, 
as Japan was doing. Korea's immunity from foreign 
aggression might then be secured. 

In 1875, a Korean fort fired on a Japanese gunboat 
which was surveying the mouth of the River Han, 
the river on which the capital lies about 20 miles 
from its mouth. It was a very insignificant occurrence, 
the action of a subordinate and ignorant officer, and 
it might be said to have been provoked by the gun- 
boat, which was in Korean waters, access to which 
on the part of any foreign vessel for any reason was 
forbidden by Korean law. The most ample punish- 
ment for it was inflicted at the time, the gunboat 
having first shelled the fort and a landing party, 
against which the Koreans, armed only with bows 
and arrows and old matchlocks, could offer no effective 
resistance, having completed its destruction and 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 105 

slaughtered the entire garrison. But the insult to 
the flag provoked a new ferment in Japan and once 
more war was demanded by hot-headed patriots. 
There was no division in the Government on this 
occasion. They were unanimous in taking a more 
sober view than some of their predecessors had done 
in 1873 and they were for once supported by the 
press. War was not declared but an armed expedi- 
tion was sent to Korea early in the following year. 
Its object was peaceful, to induce Korea to enter into 
a treaty of friendship, but following Perry's example 
in Japan, it was quite prepared to use force if its 
peaceful overtures failed. 

The Koreans yielded and the treaty was signed 
on February 26, 1876, the first step being thus taken 
to end Korea's isolation. The provisions of the 
treaty were in almost every detail precisely similar 
to those in the treaties which Japan had herself, 
when ignorant of international law and custom, 
originally concluded with Western Powers and which 
she afterwards so bitterly resented as a stain on her 
national dignity. As the Western Powers had done 
with herself, so did she now, without one particle of 
compunction, induce Korea to sign away her sovereign 
rights of executive and tariff autonomy and to confer 
on Japanese residents within her borders all the extra- 
territorial privileges which were held to violate equity 
and justice when exercised by Europeans in Japan. 



106 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

The history of Japan in the early days of her 
foreign intercourse was repeated with strange simi- 
larity in that of Korea, where Japan played the part 
that in her own case had been performed by the 
Western Powers. As in Japan, in those days, so in 
Korea, the nation was divided into two factions. One 
was saturated with conservative bigotry, and claimed 
that the old traditions of national isolation should, 
notwithstanding the treaty, be restored and main- 
tained in their integrity. The other, less numerous 
and less influential in rank and reputation, influenced 
by what had been seen of the material progress which 
Japan had already made after twenty years of foreign 
intercourse, urged that Korea should follow Japan's 
example and endeavour like her to assimilate Western 
civilisation. In the capital, Seoul, the conservative 
faction was all-powerful and the people, cherishing 
the hatred of the Japanese that was transmitted to 
them from their fathers, were easily aroused. Just 
as the British Legation in Yedo was twice attacked 
by Japanese fanatics in the early sixties, so twenty 
years later was the Japanese Legation in Seoul twice 
attacked by infuriated mobs, with the same object 
of murdering all its inmates. On both occasions in 
Seoul, the inmates were able to fight their way out 
of the city and escape to the coast, but the Legation 
buildings were utterly destroyed. After both, the 
Koreans were forced to pay heavy indemnities and 



VIII] FOREIGN" RELATIONS 107 

to make national apologies, as were the Japanese by 
the British Government, after the assaults in Yedo. 
And just as the British and French established 
garrisons of their own troops in Japan, so Japan after 
the first outrage stationed a contingent of troops in 
Korea. Her action was even more humiliating to 
Korea than that of the Western Powers to herself. 
Their troops were quartered in Yokohama, twenty 
miles from the capital, which they never entered. 
Those of Japan in Korea were posted in the heart 
of the capital, almost in the shadow of the King's 
palace. 

Japan in the treaty recognised Korea as " an in- 
dependent state, enjoying the same sovereign rights " 
as herself, and Korea by assuming this status theo- 
retically terminated her vassalage to China. Similar 
provisions were inserted in all Korea's later treaties 
with Western Powers, including Great Britain, in all 
of which Korea was dealt with as "an independent 
nation free in her foreign relations from all control 
by China." But the ties between the great Empire 
and "The Hermit Kingdom" were too close and of 
too long duration to be ended by a stroke of the pen. 
China showed no inclination to part with her old 
tutelage, Korea equally little to cease to rely on her 
suzerain for both protection and advice. Li Hung 
Chang, the great Viceroy, was at this time the 
director of China's foreign policy. He had neither 



108 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

fear of nor respect for Japan and he was determined 
that the interests of his own country in Korea should 
not be those of sentiment only. His ablest and most 
trusted lieutenant, Yuan Shi Kwai, who has since 
become the first President of the Chinese Republic, 
was sent to Korea early in the eighties as Resident- 
General, and there during the next ten years he was 
the de facto ruler of the country. The Japanese were 
all this time urging reform on the Korean Govern- 
ment, but all their efforts were rendered nugatory by 
the paralysing interference of Yuan Shi Kwai, and 
by the administrative incompetence and gross cor- 
ruption of the native ofiicials. At the end of the 
ten years, Korea had made no progress in the path 
which had been marked out for her by the Japanese 
at the beginning of their modern relations. She was 
still incapable of defending herself against foreign 
aggression. Her Government retained all its worst 
vices ; the people sunk in abject and hopeless poverty, 
spiritlessly cowering under official tyranny, indolent, 
and thriftless, were the most wretched in the world, 
as wretched under their own authorities as were the 
Irish in the darkest periods of British maladminis- 
tration, or the Bulgars when enduring the utmost 
cruelties of Ottoman oppression. 

In 1894, the people of southern Korea, maddened 
by suffering, rose in rebellion with the avowed object 
of removing from the side of their King " the corrupt 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 109 

ministers and officials who were indifferent to the 
welfare of the country." The ill-equipped and half- 
hearted soldiers who were sent to quell the rebels were 
repeatedly defeated and the Government, thoroughly 
alarmed at the result of its OAvn tyranny and in- 
capacity, appealed to Yuan Shi Kwai for help. China 
and Japan had covenanted in a treaty, defining their 
respective positions in Korea, that neither should 
send troops there without notice in advance to the 
other. At this time domestic politics in Japan were 
at one of their worst stages. The parliament was in 
the full career of obstruction that marked the early 
years of its existence and Li Hung Chang had been 
advised by the Chinese minister in Tokio that Japan, 
divided into bitterly antagonistic factions, was so 
fully occupied with her own internal affairs, that she 
could spare neither thought nor action for whatever 
occurred abroad. As it proved, the minister com- 
pletely misjudged the spirit of the nation, but at the 
time it seemed that China could do as she pleased in 
Korea without fear of further complication, and Li 
Hung Chang, relying on the disastrous advice that 
was given to him, decided to revive the old obliga- 
tions of a suzerain and assume the task of restoring 
order in the vassal kingdom. A force of 3000 troops, 
all well drilled and armed, was sent from Tientsin 
and landed at Asan, a port on the Korean coast 
within striking distance of the headquarters of the 



no THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

rebels. Formal notice of this step was given to 
Japan and she promptly replied by sending a force 
of 8000 men, complete in every detail of cavalry, 
artillery and infantry, which instead of remaining on 
the coast, as did the Chinese, at once entered the 
capital. 

Some diplomatic negotiations ensued. Japan pro- 
posed that the reform of Korea should be jointly 
undertaken by herself and China. The proposal 
was flatly refused, whereupon Japan laid before the 
Korean Government an independent programme of 
reform and demanded its unqualified acceptance. 
Korea, encouraged by Yuan Shi Kwai, refused to 
discuss this programme so long as a Japanese army 
was in her capital, and when friction was at its 
height, an incident that might almost be called an 
accident occurred on the seas which rendered war 
inevitable. Li Hung Chang determined to reinforce 
his troops in Korea, and for that purpose chartered 
the "Kowshing," a British steamer, to transport 
1500 men from Tientsin. When she was on her 
voyage, under the British flag, manned by British 
officers and a crew who, though of Chinese race, 
were British subjects, she was intercepted by the 
Japanese cruiser "Naniwa" under the command of 
the officer, then a post captain, who has since become 
world-famous as Admiral Togo and called upon to 
surrender and follow the "Naniwa" to a Japanese 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 111 

port. The Chinese officers of the troops on board 
forcibly prevented the master from complying with 
this demand : a signal was made from the "Naniwa" 
for Europeans to save themselves by jumping over- 
board, a torpedo was discharged, and in a moment 
the " Kowshing " was sinking. The master and some 
of his deck officers saved themselves by swimming 
until they were picked up by the "Naniwa's" boats, 
but everyone else on board, most of the engine-room 
staflP of British engineers, the crew of British subjects, 
and all the Chinese soldiers perished, the boats re- 
fusing to save a single soul of Chinese race. 

This occurred on the 25th of July 1894 and seven 
days later war was formally declared by both Powers. 
Two battles were fought on Korean soil and a naval 
engagement took place in Korean waters off the 
mouth of the Yalu river. Then, Japan having se- 
cured the command of the sea, the scene of the war 
was transferred to Manchuria, where a campaign 
ensued which lasted for six months. The perfection 
of Japanese military organisation, which had pro- 
vided every requisite that human foresight could 
suggest for a winter campaign amidst the Arctic 
rigours of the Manchurian mountains, and the bravery 
of her officers and soldiers were equally manifested, 
and victory, unbroken by a single reverse, though 
tarnished on some occasions by cruel excesses, at- 
tended her arms both by sea and land throughout 



112 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

the whole war. The great fortress of Port Arthur, 
its approaches both from land and sea guarded by 
heavily armed forts that had been constructed at 
great expense by European engineers according to 
the most modern principles of military science, was 
taken by storm, and the victorious army was on the 
high road to Peking, when China, beaten to her 
knees, made overtures for peace. Li Hung Chang 
had to swallow the bitter pill of proceeding to Japan, 
and after discussions which lasted nearly a month, 
a treaty of peace was signed at Shimonoseki on 
April 17, 1895. Assassination has, it has been men- 
tioned before, been a recurring incident in all 
Japanese politics both ancient and modern. It was 
not wanting in the peace negotiations. While they 
were in progress an attempt to assassinate Li Hung 
Chang was made by a Japanese fanatic indignant 
at the thought that peace prevented the crowning- 
triumph of the military occupation of Peking. That 
the old samurai spirit of Japan was not yet dead was 
manifested by the fact that fully a score of officers 
with the army in the field committed suicide in the 
orthodox method of hara-hiri for the same reason. 

The principal terms of the treaty of peace pro- 
vided that the Liao Tung peninsula, at the southern 
extremity of which lies the fortress of Port Arthur, 
and Formosa, together with the Pescadore islands 
which are adjacent to it, should be ceded to Japan ; 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 113 

that a war indemnity of 200,000,000 taels should be 
paid to her in eight instalments ; that Wei Hai Wei, 
another fortified harbour, directly facing Port Arthur, 
which had also been taken in the war, should be held 
by her until the last instalment of the indemnity was 
paid ; and that China should for ever forego all claims 
to suzerainty over Korea. Some valuable commercial 
privileges were also secured, in the benefits of which 
all Western Powers shared equally with Japan under 
the most favoured nation clauses in their treaties. 

Japan's triumph seemed to be complete. Her 
diplomatists had been no less successful than her 
generals and admirals. Her losses in life during the 
war had been insignificant and the monetary cost 
was recouped two-fold by the indemnity. She had 
impressed all the world by her military capacity. 
She had obtained a large accession of territory of 
great strategic importance and of equally great po- 
tential commercial value ; and above all she had 
attained, in the fullest extent, the ostensible object 
for which she fought and had finally ousted China from 
Korea, where thenceforward she could anticipate a 
free hand in whatever measures she might see fit to 
adopt, either for the regeneration of Korea or the 
promotion of her own material interests. But her 
triumph was soon impaired by a blow as unexpected 
as it was crushing. 

Hardly had the ratifications been exchanged in 

L. , 8 



114 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

less than a month after the signing of the treaty, 
when, one morning, the chief diplomatic representa- 
tives in Tokio of Russia, France and Germany called 
without notice on the Minister for Foreign Aflkirs 
and presented to him a joint note in which Japan 
was advised, in the interests of the permanent peace 
of the East, to forego the cession of any Chinese 
territory on the mainland. The note contained no 
threats, but it was verbally intimated, in terms which 
left no doubt, that the three Powers were prepared 
if necessary to enforce the acceptance of their advice. 
Japan was exhausted by the war : her military 
stores and money had been all used ; her ships were 
in urgent need of extensive repairs ; and her military 
authorities declared that she was incapable of re- 
sisting the new coalition which faced her. The 
national pride was bitterly wounded, but once more 
the Emperor took upon himself the responsibility of 
impressing on his people the necessity of accepting 
what was inevitable. None but he could have suc- 
ceeded. In his rescript, he declared that : — 

he had taken up arms for no other reason than his desire to secure 
for the Orient a lasting peace, that the friendly recommendations of 
the three Powers were equally prompted by the same desire, and that 
he therefore did not hesitate to accept them as in no way impairing 
the honour and dignity of his Empire. 

The peninsula was restored to China, Japan re- 
ceiving as a solatium an additional indemnity of 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 115 

30,000,000 taels. She asked for a pledge that no 
portion of the retroceded territory should ever be 
given to any foreign Power, but it was categorically 
refused, and from that day she saw that war with 
Russia was inevitable in the future and she began 
to prepare herself so that when the time came she 
could enter on it with no less confidence in its result 
than that which had animated her when she flung 
down the gauntlet to China. 

In the meantime she quickly testified her in- 
tention of honourably endeavouring to accomplish 
the aims which were the avowed object of the war. 
Her troops were withdrawn from both Korea and 
Manchuria as rapidly as transport could be found for 
them, and the reform of Korea, the task of leading 
or di-iving her into the path of progress, was en- 
trusted to the veteran statesman. Count Inouye, who 
took up his new post as Minister at the Court of 
Seoul without delay. He had, as a cabinet minister, 
been long and closely associated with Sir Harry 
Parkes. No one knew better the share which Sir 
Harry Parkes had in the reform of Japan and he had 
now before him the role in Korea which Sir Harry 
Parkes had so successfully performed in Japan. 

As one of the elder statesmen (Genro), Count 
Inouye held a position that was only second to that 
of Marquis Ito in the estimation of his countrymen. 
He was, like Ito, a Choshiu clansman, and was, like 

8—9. 



116 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

him, one of the earliest of the clansmen to be con- 
verted to the policy of opening the country and 
adopting Western civilisation. When five youths of 
the clan, braving the penalty of death or of life-long 
banishment, secretly left their country in May 1863, 
in order to study in England, Ito and Inouye were of 
their number, but while their companions made their 
journey from Shanghai to England in a mail steamer, 
Ito and Inouye shipped in a sailing ship and both 
worked their passages as ordinary seamen on the 
long voyage round the Cape, sharing throughout it 
the same food, accommodation and work as the rest 
of the crew. This they did in order to learn navi- 
gation, a knowledge of which they thought was a 
primary essential to Japan's material development. 
They had been in England only one year, during 
which they acquired a sound knowledge of the English 
language which neither ever lost in after life, when 
they heard of the complications between their feudal 
lord and the Western Powers which eventuated in 
the bombardment of Shimonoseki. They knew that 
the anti-foreign policy of Japan could only bring 
disaster, and both abandoned their studies and hastily 
returned home in order to stop their lord's folly even 
at the sacrifice of their lives, which were liable to 
legal forfeiture for having secretly left their country. 
Their efforts were in vain and the bombardment of 
Shimonoseki took place. Both nearly met their deaths 



Ito 



Inouye (Viscount) Enclo 




Inouye (Marciuis) Yamao 

The five Choshiu Students in England 1864 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 117 

at the hands- of their fellow-clansmen, who regarded 
them as traitors to their clan and to their country, 
and Inouye, who is happily still alive, bears many 
scars of the terrible wounds he received at the time. 
Both afterwards took an active share in all the 
struggles of the Restoration, and when it was ac- 
complished both became subordinate officials of the 
new Government to which their knowledge of Western 
affairs and of the English language, then a very rare 
accomplishment, was of inestimable value. The rise 
of both was rapid. Ito, as already stated, became 
Minister President within sixteen years from the 
Restoration. Inouye filled many high offices in the 
Cabinet, including that of Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
and always showed himself to be possessed of a high 
degree of courage, firmness and tact, as well as of the 
fertility of resource, and the foresight and adminis- 
trative ability that are essential in a great statesman. 
It was to this Minister that the Emperor entrusted 
the task which Japan had set herself in Korea. 

The difficulties which confronted Inouye on his 
arrival were very great. China had been driven out 
of the peninsula and her active influence on its affairs 
eradicated, but the spirit of Chinese conservatism 
remained, and it found its exponent in the Queen, 
a woman of strong and vigorous character, scarcely 
less so than Tsu Hsi, the great Dowager Empress of 
China. She completely dominated her weak and 



118 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

vacillating husband, and was herself an inflexible 
opponent of reform and progress, and a champion 
of the venality and tyranny that had hitherto been 
the chief characteristics of the Court and Govern- 
ment. From the first Inouye found in her an efiective 
barrier to the most important of his measures, and he 
was scarcely less handicapped by the conduct of his 
own countrymen in Korea. The worst rogues and 
bullies of Japan — and Japan produces abundance of 
both types — poured into the unfortunate country, 
and robbed and browbeat the terrified natives in 
a way that filled European witnesses with indignation 
and horror, and increased tenfold the traditional 
hatred of the natives to the very name of Japan. 
And Inouye himself made the one serious error in 
judgment that is apparent in the long record of his 
great career. He estimated the assimilative capacity 
of the Koreans by that of his own countrymen, and 
just as the latter were in 1871, apparently in a moment, 
converted from disciples of conservative bigotry into 
apostles of wholesale reform, so he thought could be 
the Koreans. He forgot that his great British proto- 
type in Japan had spent five years of earnest propa- 
gandism before Japanese statesmen were induced to 
enter whole-heartedly on the paths into which he was 
now anxious to lead the Koreans. 

He succeeded in reorganising the military system 
and the local administration. But a host of other 



VIII] FOREIGN RELATIONS 119 

reforms, which descended from national legislation 
and finance down to the smallest details of domestic 
life, bewildering to a people whose customs had 
remained unchanged through centuries, could only 
be kept alive by his own commanding influence. 
When, after a year, he left Korea and was replaced 
by a successor, who, though a Lieutenant-General in 
the army and a Viscount in the peerage, proved to 
be lacking in every quality of constructive and ad- 
ministrative statesmanship, all that he had done was 
quickly undone and all the worst features of Korean 
maladministration revived. Then occurred the most 
shocking incident of the reign of the Emperor, one 
that for its atrocity and cruelty in our own time 
finds its only parallel in the murders of the King and 
Queen of Servia. Viscount Miura, the new Japanese 
Minister, saw in the Queen the principal obstacle to 
the success of Japan's policy. She was hated by a 
faction of the upper classes of her own people, who 
knew that her influence would exclude them fi-om all 
share in the Government. Miura, equally forgetful 
of the civilisation which his country claimed to have 
acquired, of the mission which he had undertaken as 
the apostle of order and legality, of the dignity of his 
office, and of his own reputation, entered into a con- 
spiracy with the leader of the Korean faction for the 
murder of the Queen, and the object of the conspiracy 
was accomplished during the night of October 7, 1895. 



120 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

A mixed band of Koreans and Japanese, the latter 
including not only police and military officers, but 
even some members of the staff of Miura's Legation, 
surprised and overpowered the palace guards and, 
having made their way into the royal apartments, 
" slashed to death " the Queen and many of the ladies 
and officials of her court who tried in vain to hide or 
protect her. The corpses were saturated with paraffin 
and burnt in the courtyard. 

When the incident, with its details of revolting 
cruelty, became known in Tokio, Miura and all his 
satellites were at once recalled and brought to trial, 
but all escaped through legal technicalities and 
suffered no other punishment than the dismissal of 
those who were in Government service. But even 
if they had paid the penalty of their savagery with 
their lives, the mischief they had done could not 
have been undone. Japan, at one blow, lost all the 
influence in Korea which her success in the war with 
China had won for her, and it was not regained until 
she had fought another and a greater war. 

CHAPTER IX 

FOREIGN RELATIONS. 1895 — 1913 

In 1884, Russia concluded a commercial treaty 
with Korea, and from that time was represented in 
Seoul by one of the ablest members of her diplomatic 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 121 

service. So long as China's influence was predominant, 
and afterwards during the regime of Count Inouye, 
he was content to play an unobtrusive part in local 
politics, but the murder of the Queen gave him a 
new opportunity. The terrified King and the Crown 
Prince fled ft-om their palace and took refuge in the 
Russian Legation, where they remained for two years. 
There they were completely under the control of the 
astute minister, who became the de facto ruler of 
the country just as Yuan Shi Kwai and Inouye had, 
in their turns, previously been. He cared nothing 
for the internal reform of Korea; so far from that, 
the more chaotic her Government became, the more 
likely w as she to be a helpless prey whenever Russia 
might think the time had come to grasp it, and that 
time would come with the completion of the Trans- 
Siberian railway. In the meantime, every step that 
could consolidate Russian influence was taken. 
Russian officers were appointed as instructors to the 
Korean army, financial officials to the control of the 
treasury, civil advisers to the other administrative 
departments, and commercial concessions, involving 
substantial territorial rights that afforded plausible 
excuses for placing Russian troops and colonists in 
northern Korea, were easily obtained. 

Japan endeavoured to repair the terrible blunder 
she had made in entrusting her representation to one 
so unfitted as Miura by sending, in his place, Baron 



122 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

Komura, who was as conspicuous for the possession 
of all the qualities that fitted him for a difficult 
diplomatic post as Miura was the reverse, who was, 
in later years, the negotiator of the Portsmouth 
Treaty, Ambassador to Great Britain and Minister 
for Foreign Affairs, but even his great abilities could 
achieve nothing. Numerous efforts were made to 
come to an understanding with Russia, both at 
St Petersburg and in Tokio, but while Russia was 
willing enough to sign any conventions, she showed 
by her actions that she had no intention of abiding 
by them one moment longer than it suited her to 
do so. 

It was not in Korea alone that her activity was 
manifested. She had in 1895, with the help of France 
and Germany, compelled Japan to restore to China 
the Liao Tung peninsula and the fortress of Port 
Arthur. Within less than three years she induced 
China to cede to her, on a so-called lease, the southern 
part of the peninsula and the fortress, in cynical dis- 
regard of all the alleged reasons for depriving Japan 
of what had been legitimately won in war. She thus 
acquired a foi*tress that was believed, when in capable 
hands, to be impregnable, whose situation rendered 
it of immense strategic importance, which furnished 
what she had been so long desiring, an ice-free port 
for her fleet on the Pacific. It was notified to the 
world that the right of entrance to the harbour would 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 123 

henceforth be limited to the warships of Russia and 
China, the latter, since the Japan war, being a non- 
existing quantity, and it soon became evident that the 
acquisition of Port Arthur was only a stepping-stone 
to that of the three rich provinces of China which 
combine to form Manchuria. Russia obtained from 
China the right of carrying her trans-Siberian rail- 
way through Manchuria, both to Port Arthur and to 
Vladivostok, and of guarding the line by her own 
troops. As no limit was placed on the number of 
the latter, or on the extent of territory they were 
supposed to guard, Russian garrisons soon became 
conspicuous throughout the three provinces, and even 
the capital Mukden, the birth-place of the Imperial 
Manchus, was not exempt. The Boxer rising in 1900 
gave the opportunity for the undisguised annexation 
of a large strip of land on the right bank of the 
river Amur, which till then had been the boundary 
of Siberia and northern Manchuria, and a further 
plausible opportunity, with the military strength to 
take advantage of it, was only awaited to extend this 
annexation to the whole territory. 

With a fortified naval base at Vladivostok on 
the East of Korea, another even stronger at Port 
Arthur on the West, and aU Manchuria on the North 
in Russian hands, the ultimate fate of Korea would 
be sealed. Russia could take possession of the whole 
peninsula whenever she wished and Japan would 



124 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

then have on her sea borders, only a few miles from 
her own shores, a greedy and unscrupulous Power 
of overwhelming military strength. Korea in the 
Russian gi-asp more than realized to Japan all the 
possibilities that the most advanced Unionists profess 
to foresee in a hostile Ireland under Home Rule and 
in active sympathy with a strong naval Power at 
war with Great Britain. Or to take another parallel, 
equally applicable to ourselves, she regarded such 
an eventuality as equally pregnant with danger to 
her own national existence as we should the absorp- 
tion of Belgium and Holland by the German Empire. 
The completion of the trans-Siberian Railway en- 
abled Russia to make large increases in her troops, 
her Pacific fleet was reinforced by battleships of the 
first class and the fortifications of Port Arthur and 
Vladivostok were strengthened by every means that 
military engineering could devise to render them 
impregnable. 

Japan on her side was not idle. Through all 
these years, she was steadily developing her material 
and military resources and both advanced by leaps 
and bounds. She was gradually but surely moving 
towards the time when she could calmly contemplate 
the results of a conflict even with Russia. But 
France was Russia's ally and it was known that the 
alliance was not confined to Europe. Germany had 
already shown that she would not be indisposed to 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 125 

act with Russia in the Far East, and however ready 
Japan might be to face Russia single-handed, she 
could not risk a conflict in which Russia could rely 
on the active co-operation of one and at least the 
sympathy of another great military Power. Her 
difficulty was solved when the Treaty of Alliance 
with Great Britain, signed in London on January 30, 
1902, gave her the assurance that if the juncture 
arose, she would, in her turn, not be left to meet it 
alone. 

Two more years of diplomatic negotiation followed 
without change in Russia's methods. Her represen- 
tative in Japan and her other agents in the East 
blundered much as the Chinese Minister had done 
ten years previously. They did not underestimate 
Japanese patriotism, but they entirely misjudged 
the completeness of Japan's military preparations 
and took little pains to conceal the contempt they 
felt for her as an adversary on either sea or land. 
Acting on their information Russia thought she could 
continue to flout, with the same cynical effrontery 
as before and with absolute impunity to herself, 
every effort that was made by Japan to provide 
the safe-guards that were thought to be essential for 
the independence of Korea and her own territorial 
integrity. 

Patience, no matter how long-suffering, has its 
limits, and those which Japan had prescribed for 



126 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

Jierself in this case were transgressed in 1904, and 
on the 10th of February war was formally declared 
in Tokio. The date was one of great historical 
associations. It was one day earlier than that on 
which Jimmu, the first Emperor, ascended the throne 
more than 2,500 years before, and than that on which 
the reigning Emperor had promulgated, in 1889, the 
constitution to his people. It was two days earlier 
than that on which the Anglo-Japanese alliance was 
published to the world. 

The command of the sea was essential to the 
accomplishment of Japan's plan of campaign. She 
had a powerful fleet in full commission under the 
supreme command of Admiral Togo, the officer who, 
as captain of the "Naniwa," struck the first blow 
in the war with China, but that of Russia was, on 
paper, somewhat stronger, and it could in time be 
reinforced from the Baltic, while Japan had neither 
reserves to fall back upon nor possible means, while 
the war lasted, of acquiring new ships of the first 
class to replace any that were lost. She could not 
therefore aflbrd to stake everything on one general 
engagement, but her difficulty was solved by the 
enterprise of Togo and the supineness of the Russians 
in their avowed contempt for their enemy. The 
main Russian fleet was at anchor in the roadstead 
outside the harbour of Port Arthur, but four first- 
class cruisers were far away at Vladivostok and 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 127 

one, with a gunboat, was at Chemulpo. Not only 
was no attempt made to unite these scattered ships, 
but so little belief was felt in the possibility of Japan 
venturing on war that the most ordinary precautions 
were neglected by the fleet at Port Arthur. On the 
night of the 8th of February most of the officers 
were actually on shore at a ball. Those left on 
board were probably thinking of nothing less than 
a coming attack, when suddenly the Japanese 
flotilla of torpedo boats swooped down and, at the 
most trifling cost to themselves, inflicted such damage 
on the Russian fleet that three of its most formidable 
fighting units were incapacitated for further service. 
On the following day, the two vessels at Chemulpo 
were destroyed by an overwhelming force, after an 
attempt at resistance in which, gallant as it was, 
not a particle of damage was done either to the men 
or the ships of the Japanese. Both these events took 
place before the formal declaration of war. They 
gave Japan the undisputed command of the sea, and 
when the declaration was made she knew that she 
could land her troops when and where she would. 
Russia tried to redeem her first naval failure by 
fitting out a great fleet in the Baltic, but when it 
arrived in Japanese waters, manned with half-trained 
crews and its ships foul after the long voyage round 
the Cape, it was totally destroyed in one afternoon. 
The battle was fought on May 28, 1905, near the 



128 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

island of Tsushima, from which it takes its name, and 
it was in its results the most decisive and complete 
since Trafalgar. 

Space permits us to devote but a few words to 
the campaign on land. There, too, victory attended 
the Japanese arms but it was gained at heavy cost. 
The great fortress of Port Arthur was once more 
taken after a siege which lasted six months, and six 
great battles were fought, one of which (Liao-Yang) 
lasted for nine and another (Mukden) for fourteen 
days. The end of all was a deadlock. The Russian 
armies, though repeatedly defeated, still presented 
a bold front and Japan was coming to the limit of 
her resources both of men and money. Then the 
President of the United States intervened and peace 
was established by the Treaty of Portsmouth (New 
Jersey, U.S.A.) which was signed on August 29, 1905. 

The provisions of the treaty were in some degree 
a repetition of those of the treaty of Shimonoseki. 
Japan's preponderating influence in Korea, political, 
military and economic, was once more admitted. The 
southern extremity of the Liao Tung Peninsula and 
Port Arthur were once more ceded to her. Russia 
also undertook to evacuate Southern Manchuria, and 
as China had ceded Formosa so did Russia now cede 
the southern half of Saghalin. Japan also obtained 
control of the southern section of the Manchurian 
Railway for a length of 521 miles from the terminus 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 129 

at Port Arthur together with all the collateral privi- 
leges that Russia had extorted from China. Those 
were her fruits of the war, which had cost her 
more than 170 millions sterling and 230,000 of her 
soldiers, killed or wounded. No war indemnity 
was paid and while Japan had secured in the fullest 
degree the objects for which she had fought, she had 
now to face all the burthens of what was, relative 
to her resources, an enormous national debt and to 
assume the obligation of safe-guarding her new 
possessions and interests on the mainland of Asia. 
Provision had to be made for the interest and 
amortisation of the national debt, but this necessity 
did not deter the Government from immediately 
adopting measures to ensure the large increase in 
the fighting strength of the nation that was demanded 
by its new responsibilities. 

Six divisions were added to the army, raising the 
total from thirteen, the number before the Russian 
War, to nineteen. Each division is in itself a com- 
plete fighting unit, comprising infantry, cavalry, 
artillery, engineers and transport, and greater rela- 
tive increases were made in the latter branches of 
each division than in the infantry. Improvements 
were efiected in the arms, organisation and general 
equipment of the whole army. The conscription 
law was altered and the period of service with the 
colours reduced from three to two years, but that 



130 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

in the reserve was simultaneously extended from 
four to ten years, the results of the two measures 
being that it became possible to enrol annually a 
much larger number of conscripts than formerly, 
while the first reserve was increased from 200,000 
to 500,000 men. The total strength of the army 
on its peace footing is now close upon 250,000 and 
it is estimated that, in little more than ten years, 
Japan will be able to put into the field for foreign 
service, should occasion require it, not less than 
1,500,000 men, all fully trained soldiers, while 
another million men of the "reinforcing reserve" 
(Hoju), conscripts who, though physically fit, are 
not called to the colours and receive only a short 
training of a few months' duration spread over two 
years, will be available both for the defence of the 
country against invasion and also for filling up 
vacancies in the first fighting lines. Every man 
cheerfully undergoes all the sacrifices that are 
necessary to make him efficient and he is ready 
whenever called upon. 

No less care was given to the extension of the 
navy than to the army. Before the Russian War 
Japan possessed, exclusive of torpedo boats, 79 war 
vessels with a total displacement of 274,000 tons, 
of which six were first-class battleships, the whole 
being manned by a personnel of 46,000 officers and 
men. Two battleships and eight cruisers were lost 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 131 

during the war, but five battleships and eleven 
cruisers were captured from the Russians. An 
extensive building programme was initiated after 
the war, the result of which is that the navy now 
consists of 124 ships with a displacement of over 
500,000 tons, including 16 battleships and 13 armed 
cruisers of the first class, manned by a personnel 
of over 48,000 officers and men. Arsenals, dock- 
yards, powder factories and land fortifications were 
also increased in size and efficiency, and all the 
measures necessary for naval construction completed 
so as to render Japan absolutely independent in 
the construction and arming of ships of the largest 
size and most modern design. 

These increases in the fighting strengi)h required 
equally large increases in the national expenditure. 
The annual budget which, previous to the war, pro- 
vided for an army expenditure of about five millions 
sterling and for the navy of less than three millions 
rose to eleven millions and eight millions respec- 
tively, and these charges added to the interest on 
the national debt, necessitated an immense increase 
in taxation. The national revenue before the war 
was twenty-six millions sterling. It is now nearly 
fifty-eight millions, the yield from taxation alone 
having been increased from fourteen to thirty-two 
millions sterling. 

Industry and trade have developed and the 

9—2 



132 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

general economic conditions of the country im- 
proved to an extent that has enabled the people 
to bear the new financial burthens without distress, 
and though retrenchment has been one of the 
principal planks in the platform of the leading 
political parties, the Government has been able to 
maintain the foreign credit and policy of the nation 
unhampered by the dread of serious financial em- 
barrassments at home. The Anglo-Japanese alliance 
was re-ratified and extended in 1905. An entente 
was established with Russia and France two years 
later and the bonds thus created were morally 
strengthened when the trend of European politics 
brought Great Britain into close association with 
the two latter Powers. Japan has been able to 
proceed on the path which she had marked out for 
herself in Korea without fear of further complica- 
tions in the future, of which the possibility would 
never have been wholly wanting had Russia con- 
tinued to adhere to her old policy of expansion 
southwards in the Far East and to cherish feelings 
of one day recovering by her arms all that she had 
lost in the war. 

At the very outset of the war, when Japan had 
secured command of the sea but before the first land 
battle had been fought on the banks of the Yalu, 
a new treaty was concluded between Japan and 
Korea, by which the latter pledged herself to adopt 




Marquis Inouye 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 133 

the advice of the former in regard to the improvement 
of the administration, while Japan in return under- 
took to secure both " the external and internal peace 
and the independence and integrity of Korea," as 
well as "the safety and repose of the Imperial House'' 
— the King had, in 1897, assumed the title of and 
been recrowned as Emperor, an act which emphasized 
his complete freedom from vassalage to China. A 
supplement to this treaty, signed in 1905, gave to 
Japan the control of Korea's foreign relations and 
Prince Ito — he was advanced to the highest rank in 
the peerage after the war, and Count Inouye was at 
the same time advanced to the Marquisate — was 
appointed Resident-General, and his great abilities 
and experience were thenceforward devoted to the 
task, which he had accomplished with such brilliant 
success in his own country, of effecting the complete 
political and social reform of Korea. His position 
was, however, in some degree similar to that of 
Marquis Inouye. He was still only an adviser, and 
though the Korean Government had pledged itself to 
accept his advice, when it failed to do so, as was 
often the case, he had no means of enforcing the 
measures he thought necessary. A strong step was 
unavoidable. In July 1907, the Emperor was forced 
to abdicate, after a reign of 40 years, in favour of his 
son and simultaneously a new convention was signed, 
which practically vested the Resident-General with 



134 THE EVOLUTIO]^ OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

supreme legislative and executive authority. He 
was now no longer an adviser but an administrator 
able to enforce his will, and a sweeping campaign of 
reform was at once instituted, which affected not only 
every branch of the Government, from the court to 
the most remote local prefectures, but the whole 
social system of the nation. 

A great measure of success was achieved not only 
in administrative and legislative reforms, but also in 
the development of education, industry, sanitation and 
communications, but Prince Ito was not fated to see 
the results of his work. On October 26, 1909, he was 
assassinated by one of the people whom he was trying 
to benefit, and his great career came to an end, 
a career which, both in the service he rendered to 
his country and in the world-wide reputation as a 
statesman which it brought to him, is only paralleled 
in modern times by those of Lincoln, Bismarck and 
Cavour. The pride in which his memory is held in 
his own country may well be shared by Great Britain. 
The short education which he received in his youth 
in England and the knowledge that he then acquired 
of the foundations of the political and commercial 
greatness of the British Empire were the mainsprings 
of all the great efforts of his manhood, by which he 
transformed his own country from a puny and in- 
significant Asiatic despotism, torn by internecine 
strife and fettered by the iron shackles of feudalism, 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 135 

into one of the great constitutional, military and 
commercial Powers of the world. 

With his death the last hopes faded of preserving 
even the nominal independence of Korea. The regime 
of a protectorate which, through him, Japan was 
endeavouring to render effective, threatened to 
collapse when the great guiding hand was taken 
away, and before another year had passed, on Au- 
gust 29, 1910, the last step was taken and Korea was 
formally annexed to the Japanese Empire. The step 
had been under consideration even before Ito's death, 
and it is possible that he may have seen its ultimate 
necessity as the only means of Japan attaining in its 
completest sense all she had fought for in her two 
great wars. She had persistently disclaimed any 
desire for territorial aggression. She had in her 
treaty of 1904 with Korea unequivocally pledged 
herself to secure the independence and integrity of 
the Korean Empire, and when she did so she honestly 
intended to observe her undertaking to its uttermost 
limits. But facts had proved too strong for her. All 
the sacrifices she had made — which included a very 
large direct outlay on Korea's behalf— had failed to 
furnish definite prospects of the eflbctive regeneration 
of the unhappy, ill-governed kingdom, or of the 
permanent reform of glaring social abuses that 
had lasted for centuries. The only hope for the 
future lay in Japan openly assuming the full 



136 THE EVOLUTIOISr OF NEW JAPAN [oh. 

responsibility of the administration in name as 
well as in deed. 

Her colony of Formosa has been successfully 
exploited and, by good government, order has been 
maintained and the great natural resources of the 
island so well used that it now promises to become 
a valuable commercial asset to the Empire. What 
has been achieved in Formosa will no doubt in due 
time be also achieved in Korea, when all the black 
records of the past have been erased from the 
memories of its people by the just and humane 
treatment which the Emperor ordered his officials to 
extend to them and by a security of life and property 
that they never knew when under their own au- 
thorities. 

The long Korean chapter in the history of Japan's 
Foreign Relations is now closed and the main source 
of her external complications is gone. Neither Great 
Britain nor Russia, the two Powers most materially 
interested, raised one word of protest against the 
annexation. Great Britain was Japan's ally and the 
entente with Russia facilitated the specific delimita- 
tion of the future spheres of both in the Far East of 
the Asiatic continent. Russia has abandoned all her 
old projects of territorial expansion to the South, 
and Japan has acquired a free hand in South Man- 
churia, where she has opened for herself a path not 
unlike that which was the object of Russia before the 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 137 

war. The rights which she obtained by the treaty 
of Portsmouth, subsequently ratified by a convention 
with China, have not only been utilised to the fullest 
extent, but even attempts on the part of other nations 
to share in the development of railway construction, 
with its consequent commercial advantages in Man- 
churia, have been successfully resisted. Japanese 
troops are now in Southern Manchuria for the same 
ostensible purpose of guarding the existing railway 
lines as were formerly the Russian. Japanese immi- 
grants have been flocking into and settling in the 
province, and though parliament has recently put its 
veto on the large increase of the army in Korea that 
the military authorities demanded as a necessary 
measure for the maintenance of Japan's interests, 
every present indication leads to the assumption that 
the control which is now exercised over Southern 
Manchuria is intended to be permanent and that 
continued political unrest in China may even afford 
plausible grounds for open annexation. 

Since the war, Japan's only external controversies 
have been with the United States of America, the 
country on which, throughout the early years of the 
Imperial Government, she relied as her best political 
friend, the one in strongest sympathy with aU her 
national aspirations. Her action in Manchuria has 
been one subject of these controversies, but their 
beginning is to be found in more domestic incidents. 



138 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

Large numbers of Japanese traders, artisans and 
skilled agriculturists emigrated to the Pacific slope 
both of the United States and of Canada, attracted 
not only by the high wages that were obtainable for 
their very efficient labour, but also by the commercial 
and agricultural openings that could be profitably 
exploited by those who either brought a small capital 
with them or afterwards acquired it while in service. 
As small tradesmen, as skilled mechanics, and as 
fruit growers, living and carrying on their occupations 
at far less cost than was possible for their competitors 
of European descent, they were always able to under- 
sell the latter and acquired therefore a very consider- 
able degree of prosperity. 

They were not welcome either in British Columbia 
or in California, but their numbers continued to 
increase through the facilities provided for them by 
large emigration companies in Japan, and the result 
was an outburst both in British Columbia and in 
California of anti- Asiatic prejudice, which, in 1907, 
attained to such dimensions that the local legislatures 
were forced to pass Immigration Acts generally 
restricting the further ingress of Asiatics, but in 
both cases mainly directed against Japanese. The 
Californian legislature added insult to injury by 
debarring the children of Japanese, who were already 
resident in the State, from the privilege of attending 
the State schools. 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 139 

These measures provoked intense indignation in 
Japan and were a cause of great embarrassment to 
the Governments of Canada and the United States. 
Under the treaties, Jai^anese had clearly the right of 
entering and residing in the territories of both with- 
out limitation of any kind as to occupations or 
districts, and an obligation lay on the Governments 
to see that the provisions of the treaties were not 
violated by individual State legislatures which, what- 
ever was the extent of the local autonomy enjoyed 
by them, were subordinate to the central Govern- 
ments in all Imperial affairs. A serious international 
difficulty was threatened, but it was happily averted 
by the good sense and conciliatory disposition of the 
Government of Japan. No abatement was made of 
the admitted treaty rights, but in Japan restrictions 
were placed on emigration which were effective in 
limiting that across the Pacific to a very moderate 
scale and in confining the emigrants to persons who 
were not likely to become industrial competitors with 
Europeans. This question was thus settled, for the 
time being, but it has, at the time of writing, ap- 
parently been revived in California in a somewhat 
acute form, one which, if it continues, must cause 
serious friction between the two Governments. That 
of the United States cannot, under the constitution, 
interfere with the sovereign autonomy which each indi- 
vidual State enjoys in its local affairs. That of Japan is 



140 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

in no mood to brook any infraction of its treaty rights 
or any derogatory discrimination against its people. 

Their growing trans-Pacific trade caused the 
United States to give increased attention to affairs 
in China and to lend their diplomatic support to the 
preservation both of China's territorial integrity and 
of the principle of the "open door," by which all 
nations enjoy equal commercial opportunities through- 
out the whole Empire. Japan's actions in Manchuria, 
with their possible eventualities, were not unnoticed 
in the States. An eflPort was made in 1910 to 
counteract them in the proposal of the Secretary 
of State (Mr Knox) that all the railways in Man- 
churia should be neutralised, but its only direct result 
was the conclusion of a further agreement between 
Japan and Russia for the defence of their mutual 
interests and the maintenance of the status quo. The 
rebufi* has not diminished the active interest of the 
United States in the future of China, which in her 
turn, under her new republican Government, evinces 
a growing desire to rely on the United States for 
both political and financial support. The mutual 
attitudes of the United States and Japan across the 
Pacific are now not unlike those of the German 
Empire and Great Britain in Europe, outwardly 
friendly but with a strong undercurrent of mistrust 
in the militant sections of both nations. Both are 
aspirants for the hegemony of the Pacific. 



IX] FOREIGN RELATIONS 141 

The controversies between the United States and 
Japan gave rise to serious apprehension in Great 
Britain as to the obligations of the alliance in the 
event of a war between the two Powers and the com- 
plications which might arise under the General Treaty 
of Arbitration, then being negotiated with the United 
States, on the one side and the Treaty of Alliance 
with Japan on the other. A new Treaty of Alliance, 
to continue in force for ten years, was therefore con- 
cluded in 1911, by which modifications, intended to 
remove this apprehension, were introduced into the 
old, and in the same year a new commercial treaty 
was also negotiated and signed, the latter containing 
a special tariff clause under which the customs dues 
are fixed on the principal British imports to Japan. 
These had been so largely increased by the Japanese 
legislature in 1910 as to threaten a very serious 
diminution of British trade, and a commercial was 
therefore superimposed on the political grievance 
created by the Alliance. The former, if not removed 
in its absolute entirety, was so materially softened 
by the new treaty as to leave no reasonable ground 
for discontent on the part of the manufacturer in 
Great Britain. The customs dues now levied in Japan 
are much heavier than they were, but the aggregate 
value of British imports has substantially increased, 
and by the Alliance Great Britain is, at a time when 
it is advisable for her to concentrate her whole naval 



142 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

strength in home waters, freed from the obligation of 
maintaining a strong fleet in the Far East. Great 
Britain can pride herself in the knowledge that her 
example originally fired the ambition of Japan. She 
has her material reward in being able to count upon 
the faithful support of an ally, whose own military 
strength and natural advantages constitute an im- 
pregnable defence against all the world. 



CHAPTER X 

THE EMPEROR MEIJI 

The Emperor Mutsu Hito (Gentle Pity) died on 
the 30th of July 1912, and, in accordance with im- 
memorial custom, with him died the personal name 
that he had borne in life. He will be known in 
history by his posthumous title, the Emperor Meiji 
(Enlightened Government), the year name so happily 
chosen at the beginning of his reign and since amply 
vindicated in all the great administrative changes 
that have combined to render the name eminently 
applicable to the reign. In taking the year name as 
the posthumous title of the Emperor, a new departure 
was made, but it is possible that the precedent thus 
created will be followed in future ages. The posthu- 
mous titles of all the former Emperors were founded 



X] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 143 

on the quality that most favourably characterised the 
holder in his lifetime, such as " Divine Valour," 
"Honour the Gods,*' "Modesty" (in the case of an 
Empress), "Pious Enlightenment," or were taken 
from a locality in or in the neighbourhood of Kioto 
with which the Emperor liad some personal connec- 
tion. Year periods were formerly never synchronous 
with reigns. New ones were not begun at the begin- 
ning of a reign but more or less frequently during its 
continuation. The late Emperor's father, for example, 
ascended the throne in the third year of Kokwa (great 
transformation), and three years passed before a new 
period was begun, while, though his whole reign only 
lasted for twenty years, it comprised no less than 
seven year periods. The period of Meiji began in the 
second calendar year of the late reign and continued 
unchanged till its close, and there was therefore a 
reason for giving its title to the Emperor that did 
not exist in the case of any of his predecessors. Apart 
from that, no previous sovereign of Japan ever 
merited, in his personal character or in his govern- 
ment, the title chosen to honour his memory more 
than did he to whom that of Meiji has been given. 

The Emperor Meiji was the 121st member of the 
dynasty which, in an unbroken line of succession, 
claims to have occupied the throne of Japan since 
the Emperor Jimmu first ascended it in the year 
660 B.C. Modern research has reduced to pure 



144 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

mythology the first ten centuries of the so-called 
history of Japan, and it is only from the sixth century 
of the Christian era that the national annals are such 
as to bear the light of scientific criticism. Thence- 
forward they may justly be called authentic history 
and, however visionary may be the claim of the 
Imperial House of Japan to the more ancient desc^^nt, 
there is no doubt that from the sixth century it has 
consecutively occupied the throne, and it is therefore, 
beyond all cavil, the oldest reigning family in the 
world. Imperial rescripts emphasize the duration 
and immutability of the dynasty : " We, sitting on 
the throne that has been occupied by our Imperial 
ancestors for 2,500 years " : " The throne of our 
ancestors of a lineal succession unbroken for ages 
eternal " : " We, by the grace of Heaven, seated on 
a throne occupied by the same dynasty from time 
immemorial," are the ordinary opening words of im- 
portant rescripts, and they are reverentially accepted 
by the Emperor's subjects with the same unquestion- 
ing faith that devout and orthodox Christians tender 
to the most sacred utterances in Holy Writ. 

No other Sovereign or Pontiff" on earth occupies 
the same position as the Emperor of Japan. In the 
eyes of his subjects he is the vicegerent on earth of 
the gods in Heaven, vested with their divine attri- 
butes of love, benevolence and all-seeing wisdom. In 
his earthly functions he is both sovereign and pope. 



X] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 145 

who reigns equally in the love and veneration of his 
people. All the achievements of his statesmen and 
generals are believed to be due to the virtues which 
he has inherited from his ancestors and which, in his 
lifetime, he practises as the Father of his people. It 
was no spirit of empty flattery that prompted Oyama 
and Togo, the respective commanders-in-chief of all 
the military and naval forces in the Russian War, 
to ascribe to him all the merit of their great victories 
nor Ito that of his domestic and foreign statesman- 
ship. They only voiced, in doing so, the faith that 
was deeply implanted in their own hearts and in 
those of all their fellow-subjects and was the founda- 
tion of the fervent loyalty that rendered death for his 
sake a glorious martyrdom. 

The birth of the Emperor Meiji has been already 
mentioned in this volume. His early years were 
passed in the well-guarded seclusion of the Court 
at Kioto, but when he was little beyond the threshold 
of his boyhood he had direct experience of the civil 
war that preceded the Restoration. The Imperial 
palace was guarded by the forces of the Shogunate, 
and Choshiu, who had thrown down the gauntlet of 
rebellion, determined to drive them from their post, 
and to obtain direct access to the Emperor and his 
countenance of the revolt against the Shogun. For 
a whole day and night the battle continued around 
the palace with varying fortunes ; the gates were 

L. 10 



146 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW WAPAN [ch. 

taken and retaken, bullets fell thickly within the 
precincts of the palace, many reaching the innermost 
Imperial apartments, and the din of musketry and 
artillery was incessant. Choshiu was defeated and 
the palace was saved, but the city, "surrounded by 
a ninefold circle of flowers " (flames), was destroyed, 
and " nothing was left of it but a burnt and scorched 
desert." 

Before this battle the Emperor had already, when 
he reached the eighth year of his age, been declared 
to be the heir-apparent to the throne, and in his 
fifteenth year he succeeded his father. It cannot 
be supposed that, at that tender age, he can have 
exercised a direct influence on the early political 
events of his reign, but it would have been within 
his capacity to have withheld his sanction from the 
ministers who were subverting the most sacred tradi- 
tions of the Empire, and inflicting what his father 
would have considered the most degrading humilia- 
tions on the Imperial dignity when they declared, in 
his name, that foreign friendship should be cultivated 
and the Court opened to the diplomatic representa- 
tives of Foreign Powers. Fortunately, he had had 
the benefit of tutors more enlightened and liberal- 
minded than the majority of the courtiers, and the 
results of their teaching were sufficient to counteract 
the reactionary sentiments that might have been 
imbibed from his bigoted father. The germs of the 



X] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 147 

good sense and sound judgment, which he displayed 
in manhood, must, however, have been active while 
he was still a boy, and without those qualities it is 
not likely that any tutors, no matter how capable 
or how secure in the affections of their pupil, could 
so speedily have overcome all the prejudices that 
were founded on filial love and respect, the strongest 
of all obligations in the Japanese code of morality. 
It has been already told that the first Europeans 
admitted to his presence were impressed by his tact 
and readiness. It is not an extravagant supposition 
that his own ministers may have had equal reason to 
appreciate and benefit by the more sober qualities 
which enabled him to be in full sympathy with their 
reforms. 

The historians of those days relate no instance 
in which the ministers found him an obstacle to 
their measures. He received the hitherto hated and 
despised foreigners without demur. When he was 
advised that the future government of his Empire 
might be facilitated by the transfer of his residence 
from Kioto to Yedo, he left the home of his child- 
hood and youth, and of all his ancestors for more 
than a thousand years, and, resisting the entreaties 
of devoted disciples of the old school who implored 
him not to forsake the venerable city that was 
hallowed by so many sacred memories, he uncom- 
plainingly made a new home in the mushroom capital . 

10—2 



148 THE EVOLUTION OF NiJW JAPAN [ch. 

of the Shoguns, the seat of their government which 
had usurped all the prerogatives of his Imperial fore- 
fathers. And when he was further advised that he 
should no longer be a hidden mystery to his people, 
though remembering how his own father in his lifetime 
had been shrouded from them, he freely and unosten- 
tatiously showed himself in public, driving about the 
streets of Tokio, with a small escort, without disturb- 
ing the daily avocations of the citizens, and taking 
part in functions and ceremonies where he could be 
seen by all who cared to look upon him. 

How great this change was may be easily esti- 
mated from the description already given of his first 
journey to Osaka, and from that of his first journey 
to Tokio. In was in October 1868 that he left Kioto 
for his new capital, 300 miles away. He was 28 days 
on the road, carried in a palanquin in which he was 
screened from all onlookers, and on both sides of 
which double lines of courtiers, all in the stately 
silken robes of old Japan, walked in slow and solemn 
step. An escort of 2,000 courtiers and guards at- 
tended him throughout the entire route. All by- 
standers fell upon their knees as his procession 
approached and, as he passed, remained with 
heads bent reverentially to the ground and in pro- 
found silence that was only broken by the triple 
clapping of the hands that prefaces all Japanese 
prayers. No one dared to lift the eye even to the 



X] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 149 

level of the palanquin that bore him. "All seemed 
to hold their breaths for very awe as the mysterious 
Presence, on whom few are privileged to look and 
live, was passing slowly by." 

Early in the following year he returned to Kioto 
to celebrate the third anniversary of his father's death 
(a sacred duty marking the close of the period of deep 
mourning that has to be performed by Japanese sons 
of all classes in life) and his own marriage, which took 
place on March 9, 1869. The lady chosen to share 
his throne was Haruko, a daughter of the Ichijo 
branch of the Fujiwara family. The origin of this 
family, like that of the Imperial House, is shrouded 
in myth, but an unimpeachable lineage can be traced 
back to the 7th century. Six hundred years later 
the family was divided into five branches, of which 
the Ichijo was one. All of these still exist, their 
respective heads holding the highest rank in the 
modern peerage. The marriage, although childless, 
proved eminently fortunate. The Empress did not 
begin to take part in public functions so early as her 
husband. The old traditions that had to be over- 
come in her case were even more severe than in his, 
but from the time she did so, she played a true 
woman's part in all works of charity, and above all 
in the promotion of female education and in raising 
the general social conditions of her countrywomen. 
Women, prior to the Restoration, except in the 



150 THE EVOLUTIOIsr OF NEW JAPAN [CH. 

lower agricultural and trading classes, had no other 
functions than to be the humble and uncomplaining 
servitors of their husbands and the mothers of their 
children. They enjoyed more freedom than in other 
Oriental countries, but they were taught from infancy 
that their lot in life was obedience, to their fathers 
while maidens, to their husbands while wives, and to 
their eldest sons while widows, and no education 
fitted them to become the intellectual companions 
of men. It is mainly to the Empress that they owe 
the emancipation from these conditions which is one 
of the most marked features in the modern life of 
Japan. 

After his marriage the Emperor returned to Tokio 
where he was soon followed by his bride. There both 
afterwards lived continuously till they were parted 
by death. Both occasionally visited other parts of 
the Empire, and the Emperor made many state pro- 
gresses through all parts of his dominions, but Tokio 
was always their home, and neither showed any 
inclination to leave it, even to seek temporary refuge 
from its oppressive heat in summer or from its bitter 
winter cold. Their presence did much to restore the 
prosperity of the city under the Tokugawas, when in 
wealth, population, industry and intelligence it was 
by far the foremost in the Empire. When the Toku- 
gawas fell, Yedo fell with them, and for a time it 
seemed as if all its former glory was gone for ever. 



x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 151 

But Tokio sprang from its ruins, and, before many 
years had passed, had not only regained but far sur- 
passed the most imposing acme of the old prosperity. 
To compare Tokio of the present day with Yedo 
as it was, even when the present writer first knew it 
little more than forty years ago, when the Tokugawas 
had just surrendered their sceptre, would be like 
comparing London of the days of Charles II with 
London as we now daily see it. Yedo was a lovely 
city, one in which it was a joy to live, with its 
spacious parks and temple gardens, its great orchards, 
even in its very heart, of cherry, plum and pear trees, 
each in turn bright with their masses of fragrant 
blossom ; its stately palaces of the daimio, with their 
massive gateways and granite bastions ; and its 
streets, with never a sound to break the rigid de- 
corum of their silence, thronged with silk-clad, 
sword-girded samurai, on foot or on horseback, but 
in either case proceeding gravely and solemnly as 
became their rank and dignity. The masses of the 
people, if serfs, were contented and happy and not 
a trace of squalid poverty was to be seen even in the 
poorest quarters. But the city had another aspect. 
It was equally wanting in sanitation and police. At 
night it was in its outward appearance a vast solitude, 
shrouded in Cimmerian darkness, and if there were 
no foot-pads to be dreaded by the few belated way- 
farers, drunken samurai returning from wild orgies 



152 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

in brothels or taverns, ready to use their terrible 
swords, with or without provocation, either on their 
humble fellow-countrymen or on any European who 
was unfortunate enough to cross their path, or in 
brawls, that were only ended by death, with others 
of their own rank, were a terror from which peaceful 
citizens were never free. The samurai in his dignity, 
in the day-time, was as stately and picturesque as 
a courtier of Louis XIV. At night, the dissolute 
members of the same class, of whom there were 
many, were as quarrelsome and dangerous as the 
clansmen in the streets of Edinburgh at the be- 
ginning of the 18th century. 

Tokio of the present day has all the amenities of 
the London of George V. It is a more comfortable, 
convenient, safe and healthy place in which to live, 
but all that made Yedo so picturesque has gone. 
Only one feature of its medieval and feudal splendour 
has been preserved. The deep moats, massive walls 
and turf-clad glacis that encircled the palace of the 
Shogun still surround the palace of the Emperor and 
have lost none of their old grandeur. The pine and 
cherry trees still line the moat edges and the walls, 
and myriads of water fowl still find a sanctuary in 
the moats. Everything else is gone. Even the parks 
have been disfigured by architectural monstrosities 
in glaringly-red bricks, and the son of the stately 
silk-robed samurai now hurries, in a tweed suit and 



xj THE EMPEROR MEIJI 153 

a felt hat, to his desk in a bank in a noisy, crowded, 
electric tram-car. At night the main streets are as 
brilliant, populous, noisy and safe as Piccadilly ; 
they are entirely exempt from Piccadilly's plague 
spot in that there is no open display of female vice, 
and the danger that confronts the peaceful pedestrian 
is no longer the sword of the samurai but the motor 
of the road-hog. 

It is difficult for a foreigner to attempt to estimate 
the direct share which the Emperor had in all the 
marvellous progress of his Empire. No sovereign in 
the history of the world has ever been better served 
in every department of his government, whether 
military or civil. None has ever commanded so de- 
voted a people. But that the Emperor was well 
served was largely owing to himself He possessed, 
in an eminent degree, what is perhaps the most 
precious attribute of a sovereign, the faculty of 
judging men, of selecting the best among them as 
his advisers, and he gave to those whom he selected 
his complete confidence and a support that never 
wavered in its loyalty. It is known that he was not 
only industrious, but industrious even to a degree that 
would not misbecome a man who had to make his 
name and earn his livelihood in an arduous pro- 
fession. He presided in person at important meetings 
of his cabinet, when vital affairs of state had to be 
discussed and decided, and read not only the official 



154 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

reports of his ministers and the minutes of his parlia- 
ments, but the leading journals in the press. He had 
occasionally to decide between conflicting views of 
those whom he most trusted, and did so with firm- 
ness that brooked no contradiction, and without 
reservation of any kind. When only 21 years of 
age, as has been already told, he prevented war with 
Korea, though nearly the whole nation demanded it, 
and by his decision he had to sacrifice the future 
services of some of those who had done much to 
establish him on his throne. Twenty years later, it 
was he again who decided that Japan must accept 
the humiliation of yielding to the three Powers, and 
it was only his decision that reconciled the nation to 
the sacrifice of what had been fairly won in war. 
When a refractory parliament rejected the naval 
estimates that were considered essential for the 
national safety, he publicly declared that the parlia- 
ment must give way and it did, awed into prompt 
submission and shamed perhaps by his sacrifice of 
a substantial portion of his own civil list. Many 
other incidents might be quoted, and it may be 
assumed that the firmness he showed in great was 
not wanting in less important affairs and that at no 
period of his reign did he ever permit himself to fall 
into the rOle of a dummy ruler. 

His interest in both his army and navy was mani- 
fested by his presence at all manoeuvres and reviews 



X] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 155 

that were held on a large scale. No mclemency of 
weather ever deterred him, and he was equally 
assiduous in the performance of the more orna- 
mental functions of a sovereign. Hospitals were 
visited, railways, docks and other great public under- 
takings were opened by him in person, and even 
jails knew his presence. No work of public benefit, 
charity or mercy ever sought his personal interest 
in vain, and his private purse was always open for 
the relief of the national distress that ensued on fire, 
earthquake, flood or pestilence, calamities from which 
his country sufiered often and heavily. The rapidity 
and extent of the purely material advance of Japan, 
military, industrial and commercial, has thrown into 
the shade the progress she has made in the domain 
of science. She may be said to have been absolutely 
ignorant of even the elements of Western science 
prior to the Restoration. Now there are few branches 
in which her sons, if they have not won distinction 
beyond their own borders, have not, at least, proved 
themselves capable experts, fully competent both to 
practise and to teach. That this is so is due to the 
encouragement which the Emperor gave to higher 
education in Japan and to the continuation in 
Europe of the studies of the best pupils of the 
home universities. 

He had only two amusements, horse riding and 
the composition of poetry. He rode both boldly and 



156 THE EYOLUTIOIsr OF NEW JAPAN [ch. 

well, better than most of his subjects who have not 
had a special training. Yerse-making is a necessary 
accomplishment of every educated Japanese gentle- 
man and not an uncommon one among women. It 
holds the place that Latin versification did in England 
in the days of Addison. The beauties of nature — 
beauties such as trees bending beneath a weight of 
snow or an autumn moon reflected in a placid lake, 
to which the English sense is often blind but which 
appeal strongly to the Japanese — and the vicissitudes 
of human life are its chief themes. In this art the 
Emperor excelled. Many of his poems have been 
published and they confirm the estimate of his 
character that is founded on his public actions, 
breathing as they do the most tender sentiments 
of compassion and pity. He had his own full share 
of human sorrow. The Empress was childless but 
fourteen children were born to him from the four 
ladies who were united to him as Jugo. Nine died 
in infancy or childhood, leaving one son, who is now 
the Emperor, and four daughters who have grown to 
womanhood. Two of his nearest relatives sacrificed 
their lives in the China war, and of the devoted minis- 
ters and generals who served him at the Restoration, 
to all of whom he was attached by ties of gratitude 
and affection, only five survived him. 

His reign was the longest in the authentic history 
of Japan. It lasted 45 years, and its end came with 



x] THE EMPEROR MEIJI 167 

grief and sorrow to all his people. His active life 
was spent in Tokio, where he died in his modern 
palace, but his last resting place is in a mausoleum 
at Kioto, built in the old style of Japan, amid the 
solemn and silent groves where rest also the remains 
of his ancestors during more than a thousand years. 
With his death ended the period of Meiji, during 
which the evolution of New Japan was begun and 
carried to its end. In all the history of the civilisa- 
tion of the world there is nothing that can compare 
with its rapidity and completeness. 

NOTES 

In 1897 Japan adopted a gold standard of currency, the unit 
being the yen, the sterling equivalent of which is 2s. O^d. Prior to 
1897, the yen was a silver coin, the sterling value of which fluctuated 
in ratio with the market price of silver. Silver was a steadily 
depreciating commodity and the sterling value of the yen gradually 
fell from about 4s. 2d. in 1874 to less than half that amount in 1894. 
Allowance must be made for this fall in estimating in sterling the 
progress of the foreign trade of Japan which is described on page 92, 
but the yen has been retained in the text as the only available common 
denominator. The value of the Chinese tael, a silver token, else- 
where mentioned, at the close of the Japan-China war was roughly 
about 3s. 

"Hara-kiri,"— literally " belly-cut "—suicide by disembowelling, 
was the prerogative of the Samurai class. It was instituted in the 
middle ages in order that Samurai who had committed crimes 
which, though meriting the punishment of death, were not in them- 
selves disgraceful, should by putting an end to their own lives escape 
the indignity of dying by the hands of the common executioner. In 



158 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN 

these cases, it was carried out in the presence of witnesses, with 
much formality, in accordance with a very rigid code of etiquette, on 
the command either of the Government or of the suicide's superiors 
in his own Fief. Death in this way involved no degradation either 
to the sufferer or his family. In time, it came to be committed 
voluntarily, either when a Samurai had, for any reason, lost all 
interest in life, or when (by far the more common cause) he desired 
to make the strongest protest that was in his power against some act, 
conduct, or policy of his superiors. Every Samurai carried two 
swords, a long and a short one. The first was to be used against 
enemies, the second on himself. He never parted from either. When 
abroad, they were both worn in his girdle; when indoors, both lay 
close beside him, whether by day or night, and he was trained from 
his infancy to be ready to use either for its specific purpose at a 
moment's notice. When the act was performed by command, the 
short sword was thrust into the belly by the suicide, but he was then 
immediately decapitated by a "Second," who stood beside him with 
drawn sword, and who was generally either a relative or a close friend. 
The physical agony was, therefore, momentary. But, in voluntary 
cases, there was no ' ' Second" and the belly was'cut completely open by 
the suicide himself, so that the act was prolonged and excruciatingly 
painful. A full description of it is given in Lord Kedesdale's Tales of 
old Japan, Lord Redesdale having himself witnessed the completion 
of a judicial sentence of this nature. Women of the Samurai class 
imitated their husbands, but in their case the throat and not the 
belly was cut. The last instances were the suicides of General Nogi 
and his wife on the death of the late Emperor. 

Considerations of space have necessitated the omission of the 
Kurile Islands from the map of the Japanese Empire. These Islands, 
called by the Japanese "Chi-shima" or "the thousand isles" are 
31 in number, and extend in a continuous chain from the north-east 
of Hokkaido to Cape Lopatka, the southern extremity of Kamchatka. 



POSTSCRIPT 

BOOKS ON JAPAN 

The task heralded in the Introduction is now completed. The 
prescribed limits of space have confined it to a skeleton outline, but 
none of the great events of a great reign have been omitted and what 
has been told is, it is hoped, sufiicient to enable the reader to form a 
logical conception of the forces which gave rise to the evolution of 
new Japan and of their results. 

Some readers may desire to pursue the subject, and if they do, 
there is the most abundant material for their purpose. Books deahng 
with Japan, from every conceivable point of view, can be numbered 
by thousands and both their number and variety are sufficient to 
bewilder the seeker for knowledge, who has no expert guide to direct 
him in his choice. To such a one, we venture to submit the following, 
all of which are easy to read and are written by recognised authorities. 

1. "Tales of Old Japan," 2 vols. Lord Kedesdale. Tales, direct 
from Japanese sources, vividly illustrating life in the good old days of 
feudalism, told in the most graceful English. London, 1871. 

2. "The Capital of the Tycoon." 2 vols. Sir Eutherford Alcock. 
A picturesque description of Japan and of life in Yedo, during the 
closing years of the Shogunate. London, 1863. 

3. "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan." 2 vols. Miss Bird. Fourth 
edition. London^ 1885. 

4. "East and West." Sir E. Arnold. This and Miss Bird's are 
the two best of the many hundreds of books that have been written by 
travellers. London, 1896. 

5. " Classical Poetry of the Japanese." Chamberlain. London, 
1880. 

6. "A History ot Japanese Literature." Aston. London, 1897. 

7. "Shinto. The Way of the Gods." Aston. An esoteric 
exposition of the indigenous religion of Japan, appealing only to the 
serious student. This and the two preceding works are the best in 
their respective subjects. London, 1905. 



160 THE EVOLUTION OF NEW JAPAN 

8. "Things Japanese." Chamberlain. An encyclopedia of 
information on a vast variety of interesting topics, arranged in 
alphabetical order. Fourth edition. London, 1902. 

9. "The Mikado's Empire." Griffis. New York, 1876. 

10. "Japan." Story of the Nations series. Murray. This and 
the preceding are histories from the earliest times, by American 
authors, the first also containing a description of the author's 
personal experiences in Japan. London, 1904. 

11. "Japan and China." 12 vols. Brinkley, The author was 
one of the greatest of English scholars, a profound expert on every 
subject connected with Japan, and the work is worthy of his reputa- 
tion. London, 1903-4. 

12. " Japan." Encyclopssdia Britannica. By the same author, 
equally worthy of his reputation and sufficiently comprehensive to 
satisfy those who have neither time nor opportunity to read his larger 
work. Eleventh edition. London, 1911. 

13. "Europe and the Far East." Douglas. Describes the modern 
history, and especially the relations with China. Cambridge, 1913. 

14. Lafcadio Hearn. All his works. A graceful writer, a keen 
observer, a philosophic critic, who loved Japan and knew as no other 
European has ever done its inner life to the core. 

A score of other books might be named, on art, industry, travel, 
life, history, etc., both of old and recent date, but this list will 
probably be sufficient. The reception given by reviewers and the 
public to previous works by the present author tempts him, even at the 
risk it involves, to add their names, "The Story of Old Japan," "The 
Story of Korea," and "Japan of the Japanese." In the two first 
named, he endeavoured to tell the histories of the two countries, which 
are as closely interwoven as those of England and France, in a style 
that rendered their perusal no greater task than that of an ordinary 
novel, and in the third he describes the social and economic progress 
of Modern Japan. The dates of publication of " Japan " in the Story 
of the Nations series and of "Europe and the Far East " are those of 
the latest editions, both of which contain additional chapters, also by 
the present author. 



INDEX 



Agriculture and Commerce, de- 
partment of, 94 

Agricultural industry, 93 

Ainu, 4 

Aicock, Sir Eutherford, 12 

Amherst, Lord, 101 

Amur, Eiver, 123 

Anglo-Japanese AlMance, 68, 95, 
132 

Army, 50, 51, 67, 129 

Asan, Korean port, 109 

Assassination, 28, 43, 58, 59, 79, 
112 

Austria, 77 

Baltic fleet, 127 

Bank of Japan, 91, 92 

Belgium, 77, 124 

Bismarck, 134 

Boxer Campaign, 51, 123 

British Legation, attacks on, 28, 

106 
British troops in Yokohama, 44, 

107 
Buckle, History of Civilisation, 

11 
Budget, Annual, 131 
Bulgars, 108 

Cabinet, 61, 70 
L. 



Calendar, 1, 53 

California, 138 

Cavour, 134 

Charles II, 151 

Charter Oath, Emperor's, 36, 

47, 54 
Chemulpo, Korean port, 127 
China, 9, 26, 62, 65, 94, 95, 99, 

chaps. VIII. and ix. passim 
Choshiu, fief of, 18, 20, 23, 24, 

25, 28, 37, 38, 55, 56, 57, 68, 

115, 145, 146 
Choshiu students, the five, 116 
Christianity, prohibition of, 34, 

75 
Christians, persecutions of, 8, 34, 

72, 75, 102 
Civil Law, 48 
Columbia, British, 138 
Confucian classics, 17 
Confucian code, 34 
Conscription, 51, 129 
Constitution, promulgated, 63 
Constitutional Reformers, 57 
Consuls and Consular Courts, 

44, 73, 74 
Converts to Christianity, 8, 47 
Criminal Law, 48 
Currencv, 40, 85, 86, 89, 91, 92, 

&5, 96 

II 



162 



INDEX 



Customs Dues, 77, 98, 141 
Czarewitch, attempted assassina- 
tion, 79 

Daimio, feudal nobles, 6, 10, 

13 
Dai-Nihon-Shi, Histoi'y of Great 

Japan, 17 
Desima, island, 8, 31, 84 
Dutch traders, 7, 8, 14, 31, 84, 

86 

Education, 51, 52 

Egypt, 11 

"Elder Statesmen" (Genro), 17, 

67, 68, 115 
Elgin, Lord, 15 
Embassy to Europe, 74 
Emigration to America, 138, 139 
Emperor's Eescripts, 30, 33, 51, 

60, 83, 114, 144 
Empress Haruko, 145, 146, 156 
English traders, 7 
Entente with Russia and France, 

132, 136 
Ex-territorial jurisdiction, 43, 71, 

73, 74, 81, 105 

Feudalism, 5, 9, 39, 40, 58, 59 

Feudal Lords, 10 

Financial Eeform, 90 

Fleet, allied, bombards Shimono- 

seki, 23 
Fleet, beginning of Japanese, 

36 
Fleet, British, bombards Kago- 

shima, 23 
France, 23, 114, 122, 124 
French troops in Yokohama, 107 
Formosa, Island, 112, 128, 136 
Fujiwara, family of court nobihty , 

4, 22, 37, 67 



Gambling, 91 

Genro, vide Elder Statesmen 

George III, 101 

George V, 152 

Germany, 63, 80, 114, 122, 124, 

140 
Go Komatsu, Emperor, 17 
Gold and Silver, ratios of, 84 
Go Sankei, "The three families," 

16 
Great Britain, 23, 44, 45, 63, 77, 

78, 80, 94, 95, 96, 98, 124, 134, 

186, 140, 141, 142 

Hakodate, 16, 36, 41 
Han, River in Korea, 104 
Hara-kiri, 112, 157 
Haruko, Empress, vide Empress 
Hegemony of the Pacific, 140 
Heimin, commoners, 38 
Hermit Kingdom, 107 
Hideyoshi, Dictator, 101, 102 
Hizen, fief of, 37, 38, 56, 59 
Hoju, "Reinforcing reserve of 

army," 130 
Hokkaido, 95 
Holland, 23, 124 
Home Rule, 82, 124 
Hondo, 95 
House of Representatives, 63, 64 

Ichijo, branch of Fujiwara family, 

149 
Immigration Acts, Anti- Japanese, 

138 
Imperial Diet, vide Parliament 
Import trade, 87, 93, 98, 141 
India, 11, 26 
Industrial development, 93, 96, 

98 
Inouye, Marquis, statesman, 38, 

115, 116, 117, 118, 121, 133 



INDEX 



163 



Irish, 108 

Itagaki, statesman, 56, 59, 103 

Ito, Prince, statesman, 38, 60, 

61, 62, 67, 115, 116, 117, 133, 

134, 145 
Iwakura, statesman, 37 
lyemochi, 14th Tokugawa Sho- 

gun, 21, 22 
lyeyasu, 1st Tokugawa Shogun, 

7, 16, 17 

Japanese Legation in Seoul, 
attacks on, 107 

Jesuit Missionaries, 7, 13, 14, 
15, 31 

Jimmu Tenno, first Emperor, 3, 
17, 126, 143 

Jingo, Empress, 101 

Jugo, morganatic wives of Em- 
perors, 22, 156 

Kagoshima, Satsuma capital, 

23 
Kamakura, town, 5, 6 
Katsura, Prince, soldier and 

statesman, 68, 69 
Kido, statesman, 38 
Kioto, ancient capital, 4, 5, 6, 

13, 14, 15, 22, 24, 30, 36, 38, 

145, 147, 148, 149, 157 
Kiusiu, 96 
Knox, Mr, Secretary of State, 

140 
Kokwa, year name, 143 
Komei, Emperor, 20, 22, 23, 

25 
Komura, Baron, 122 
Korea, 56, 62, 67, chaps, vni. and 

IX. passim, 154 
Korea, Imperial Crown Prince, 

121 
Korea, King of, 121, 133 



Korea, Queen of, 117, 119, 120, 

121 
Kowshing, British steamer, 110, 

111 

Kuge, Court nobles, 6 
Kwazoku, nobles, 38 

Labour, 99 

"Land of the Gods," 19 

Leipzig, 74 

Liao Tung, peninsula, 112, 122, 
128 

Liao Yang, battle of, 128 

Li Hung Chang, Chinese states- 
man, 107, 109, 110, 112 

Lincoln, 134 

London, 151, 152 

Louis XIV, 152 

Macartney, Lord, 101 
Manchu Emperors, 102, 103 
Manchuria, 111, 115, 123, 128, 

136, 137, 140 
Manufactures, 88, 93, 97 
Mayor of Palace, 13, 14 
Meiji, year name, 2, 3, 87, 143, 

147 
Meiji, posthumous title of Em- 
peror Mutsu Hito, 142, 143, 

145 
Mercantile Marine, 50, 96 
Mexico, 9, 11 
Minamoto, family of court no- 

bihty, 37 
Ming, dynasty of China, 102 
Ministers of War and Navy, 67, 

68 
Mint, foundation of, 46, 49, 

89 
Missionaries, 7, 8, 13, 31, 47, 

102 
Mito, feudal lord, 16, 17, 26 



164 



INDEX 



Miura, Viscount, Minister to 
Korea, 119, 120, 121, 122 

Most favoured nation clause in 
treaties, 77, 113 

Mukden, 123, 128 

Mutsu Hito, Emperor, 3; birth 
of, 22, 145; accession, 23, 146; 
assumption of Government, 27, 
30 ; first reception of foreigners, 
30 ; visit to Osaka, 35 ; removal 
to Yedo (Tokio), 38, 147, 148; 
death, 142 ; marriage, 149 ; chil- 
dren, 156; amusements, 155, 
156 ; burial, 157 ; et passim 

Nagasaki, 8, 16, 43 
Nakayama, the Lady, 22 
Naniwa, Japanese cruiser, 110, 

111, 126 
National Expenditure, 131 
Navy, 50, 70, 130, 131 
Nengo, year names, 1 
Nihon GuaisM, The External 

History of Japan, 17 
Nobility, the five orders of, 

62 
Nobility, the old, 61 
Nogi, General, 158 

Okubo, statesman, 37, 59, 60 
Okuma, statesman, 38, 59, 60, 

79 
Open door, the, 140 
Opening of Japan, 16 
Open ports, 76 
Orders in Council, 73 
Osaka, 35 
Oyama, General, 145 

Pacific littoral, 103, 138, 140 
Pacific Ocean, 9, 19, 140 
Paris, 74 



Parkes, Sir Harry S., 32, 43, 46, 

80, 115 
Parliament (Imperial Diet), 61, 

63, 64 
Patriotism, 52, 65 
Peace Preservation Acts, 60 
Peerage, 62 

Peers, House of, 61, 63 
Peking, 112 
Perry, Commodore, 15, 19, 20, 

22, 102, 105 
Peru, 11 

Pescadores, Islands, 112 
Piccadilly, 153 
Population, 92, 93 
Port Arthur, 112, 122, 123, 124, 

126, 127, 128, 129 
Portugal, 77 
Portuguese traders, 7, 8 
Posthumous titles of Emperors, 

142, 143 
Prefectures, 40 
Press, 46, 49, 56, 78, 105 
Primorski, Russian province, 103 
Prisons, reform of, 48 

Railways, 49, 95, 96 
Railway, trans-Siberian, 121, 124 
Redesdale, Lord, 158 
Reforms, general, 49, 53 
Revenue, national, 131 
Revolution, beginning of, 16 
Rikken-Seiyu-Kai, political party, 

66, 67, 69, 70 
Russia, 77, 95, 101, 103, 104 and 

chap. IX. passim 

Saghalin, Island, 128 

Saigo, General and statesmarn, 

37, 103 
Saionji, Marquis, Premier, 67 
Samurai, 10, 12, 14, 20, 32, 



INDEX 



165 



38, 42, 55, 97, 151, 152, 157, 
158 

Sanjo, statesman, 37 

Satsuma, fief of, 18, 20, 23, 24, 
25, 28, 37, 55, 56, 57 

Satsuma, rebellion, 51, 58, 89 

Seclusion of Japan, 9 

Seiyu Kai, vide Rikken-Seivu-Kai 

Seoul, 106, 115, 120 

Shanghai, 73 

Shimadzu Saburo, statesman, 37 

Shimonoseki, 23, 24, 112, 116, 
128 

Shipbuilding, restrictions on, 9 

Shizoku, gentry, 38 

Shogun, chaps, i. and ii. passim, 
84, 145, 148 

Shugiin, "Assembly of Legisla- 
tive Discussion," 55 

Siam, 9 

Siberia, 123 

Silk industry, 87, 8'8 

Slavery, 11 

Sonno Joi, party cry, 20 

Spain, 77 

Spanish traders, 7, 8 

Stirling, Admiral, 15 

Straits Settlements, 99 

Sun Goddess, Tensho Daijin, 3 

Taikun, vide Tycoon 

Tariffs, customs, 16, 98 

Tea, export of, 88 

Tientsin, 109, 110 

Togo, Admiral, 110, 126, 145 

Tokio, 5, 88, 49, 114, 126, 148, 

150, 151, 152, 157 
Tokugawa, dynasty of Shoguns, 

7, 13, 18, 24, 34, 36, 101, 150, 

151 
Torture, 48, 72, 75 
Tosa, fief of, 25, 37, 56 



Trade, 8, 42, chap. viii. passim 

Transport, development of, 95 

Treaties, first with Europeans, 

16, 19, 21,26; disabilities of, 

73; attempt at revision, 74; 

most favoured nation clauses, 

77, 113; new, 81; new com- 
mercial, 141 

Treaties with Korea, 105, 106, 

132, 133 
Treaty of Alliance, 95, 125, 126, 

132, 141 
Treaty of Arbitration, 141 
Treaty of Portsmouth, 122, 128, 

137 
Treaty of Shimonoseki, 112, 128 
Treaty with China, 112 
Treaty with Eussia, 120 
Tribute, payment of, 101 
Tsu Hsi, Empress of China, 

117 
Tsushima, Island, 128 

Ulster Orangemen, 82 

United States of America, 19, 23, 

78, 80, 104, 128, 137, 138, 139, 
140, 141 

Terse making, 156 
Vladivostok, 123, 124, 126 

Wages, 99, 100 

War Indemnity, 95, 113, 115, 

129 
Washington, 22 
Wei Hai Wei, 113 
Women, status of, 150 
Working classes, 96, 99, 100 

Xavier, Jesuit missionary, 31 

Yalu, River in Korea, 111, 132 



166 



INDEX 



Yamamoto, Admiral, Prime Mi- 
nister, 69 

Yedo, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15, 29, 31, 
36, 147 

Yen, unit of currency, 157 

Yokohama, 16, 29, 49, 84, 151, 
152 



Yokohama Specie Bank, 91 

Yodo, statesman, 37 

Yoritomo, first Shogun, 5, 6, 7, 
17, 38, 106 

Yuan Shi Kwai, Chinese states- 
man, 108, 109, 110, 121 

Yoshinobu, last Shogun, 21, 27 



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THE 

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Published by the Cambridge University Press under 
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80 VOLUMES NOW READY 
HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY 

42 Ancient Assyria. By Rev. C. H. W. Johns, Litt.D. 
51 Ancient Babylonia. By Rev. C. H. W. Johns, Litt.D. 

40 A History of Civilization in Palestine. By Prof. R. A. S. 
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78 The Peoples of India. By J. D. Anderson, M.A. 

49 China and the Manchus. By Prof. H. A. Giles. LL.D. 

79 The Evolution of Modern Japan. By J. H. Longford. 

43 The Civilization of Ancient Mexico. By Lewis Spence. 
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HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY {continued) 

16 The Historical Growth of the Enghsh Parish Church. By 
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68 Enghsh Monasteries. By A. H. Thompson, M.A., F.S.A. 
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59 Ancient Stained and Painted Glass. By F. S. Eden. 
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33 The Ballad in Literature. By T. F. Henderson. 

37 Goethe and the Twentieth Century. By Prof. J. G. 

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69 Plato : Moral and Political Ideals. By Mrs J. Adam. 

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13 The Administration of Justice in Criminal Matters (in 
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1 The Coming of Evolution. By Prof. J. W. Judd. C.B., F.R.S. 

2 Heredity in the Light of Recent Research. By L. Don- 

caster, M.A. 
25 Primitive Animals. By Geoffrey Smith, M.A. 

73 The Life-story of Insects. By Prof. G. H. Carpenter. 

48 The Individual in the Animal Kingdom. By J. S. Huxley, 
B.A. 

27 Life in the Sea. By James Johnstone, B.Sc. 
75 Pearls. By Prof. W. J. Dakin. 

28 The Migration of Birds. By T. A. Coward. 
36 Spiders. By C. Warburton, M.A. 

61 Bees and Wasps. By O. H. Latter, M.A 

46 House Flies. By C. G. Hewitt, D.Sc. 

32 Earthworms and their Allies. By F. E. Beddard F R S 

74 The Flea. By H. Russell. 

64 The Wanderings of Animals. By H. F. Gadow, F.R.S. 

ANTHROPOLOGY 

20 The Wanderings of Peoples. By Dr A. C. Haddon, F.R.S 

29 Prehistoric Man. By Dr W. L. H. Duckworth. 

GEOLOGY 

35 Rocks and their Origins. By Prof. Grenville A. J. Cole. 

44 The Work of Rain and Rivers. By T. G. Bonney, Sc.D. 

7 The Natural History of Coal. By Dr E. A. Newell Arber 

30 The Natural History of Clay. By Alfred B. Searle. 

34 The Origin of Earthquakes. By C. Davison, Sc.D., F.G.S. 
62 Submerged Forests. By Clement Reid, F.R.S. 
72 The Fertility of the Soil. By E. J. Russell, D.Sc. 

BOTANY 

5 Plant-Animals: a Study in Symbiosis. By Prof. F. W. 

Keeble. 
10 Plant-Life on Land. By Prof. F. O. Bower, Sc.D.. F.R.S. 
19 Links with the Past in the Plant- World. By Prof. A. C. 

Seward, F.R.S. 



PHYSICS 

52 The Earth. By Prof. J. H. Poyntlng, F.R.S. 

53 The Atmosphere. By A. J. Berry, M.A. 
65 Beyond the Atom. By John Cox, M.A. 

55 The Physical Basis of Music. By A. Wood, M.A 

71 Natural Sources of Energy. By Prof. A. H. Gibson, D.Sc. 

PSYCHOLOGY 

14 An Introduction to Experimental Psychology. By DrC. S. 

Myers. 
45 The Psychology of Insanity. By Bernard Hart, M.D. 
77 The Beautiful. By Vernon Lee. 

INDUSTRIAL AND MECHANICAL SCIENCE 

3 1 The Modern Locomotive. By C. Edgar Allen, A.M.I.Mech.E. 

56 The Modern Warship. By E. L. Attwood. 

17 Aerial Locomotion. By E. H. Harper, M.A., and Allan 

E. Ferguson, B.Sc. 

18 Electricity in Locomotion. By A. G. Whyte, B.Sc. 

63 Wireless Telegraphy. By Prof. C. L. Fortescue, M.A. 
58 The Story of a Loaf of Bread. By Prof. T. B. Wood, M.A. 
47 Brewing. By A. Chaston Chapman, F.l.C. 



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no better series of handy books for ready reference than those 
represented by the Cambridge Manuals." — School World 

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